united 93 Crash

The plane crashed into a reclaimed coal strip mine in Stonycreek Township at 10:03:11.^[61] The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the flight impacted at 563 miles per hour (906 km/h) at a 40 degree nose-down, inverted attitude.^[19] The impact left a crater eight to ten feet deep (c. 3 m), and 30 to 50 feet wide (c. 12 m).^[62] All 44 people died.^[63] Many media reports and eyewitness accounts cited the time of the crash at 10:06 or 10:10,^[64][65] as did an analysis of seismographic data in the area^[66] but which the 9/11 Commission report states was not definitive.^[67] Other media venues and the 9/11 Commission reported the time of impact as 10:03,^[68][69] based on when the flight recorders stopped, analysis of radar data, infrared satellite data, and air traffic control transmissions.^[23]
Kelly Leverknight was watching news of the attacks when she heard the plane. "I heard the plane going over and I went out the front door and I saw the plane going down. It was headed toward the school, which panicked me, because all three of my kids were there. Then you heard the explosion and felt the blast and saw the fire and smoke."^[70] Another witness, Eric Peterson, looked up when he heard the plane, "It was low enough, I thought you could probably count the rivets. You could see more of the roof of the plane than you could the belly. It was on its side. There was a great explosion and you could see the flames. It was a massive, massive explosion. Flames and then smoke and then a massive, massive mushroom cloud."^[71] Val McClatchey had been watching footage of the attacks when she heard the plane. She saw it briefly, then heard the impact. The crash knocked out the electricity and phones. McClatchey grabbed her camera and took the only known picture of the smoke cloud from the explosion ^[72][73]. Ten years after 9/11, a video of the rising smoke cloud filmed by Dave Berkebile (deceased by 2011) from his yard located eight miles away from the crash site was published on YouTube ^[74][75].
The first responders arrived at the crash site after 10:06.^[52] Cleveland Center controllers, unaware the flight had crashed, notified the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) at 10:07 that Flight 93 had a bomb on board and passed the last known position. This call was the first time the military was notified about the flight.^[21] Ballinger sent one final ACARS message to Flight 93 at 10:10, "Don't divert to DC. Not an option." He repeated the message one minute later. The Herndon Command Center alerted FAA headquarters that Flight 93 had crashed at 10:13.^[21] NEADS called the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center for an update on Flight 93 and received notification that the flight had crashed.^[76]
At 10:37, CNN correspondent Aaron Brown, covering the collapse of the World Trade Center, announced, "We are getting reports and we are getting lots of reports and we want to be careful to tell you when we have confirmed them and not, but we have a report that a 747 is down in Pennsylvania, and that remains unconfirmed at this point."^[77] He followed that up at 10:49 by reporting that, "We have a report now that a large plane crashed this morning, north of the Somerset County Airport, which is in western Pennsylvania, not too terribly far from Pittsburgh, about 80 miles or so, a Boeing 767 jet. Don't know whose airline it was, whose airplane it was, and we don't have any details beyond that which I have just given you." In the confusion, he also erroneously reported a second hijacked plane heading for the Pentagon after the crash of the first

united 93 Hijackers

The hijacking of Flight 93 was led by Ziad Jarrah, a member of al-Qaeda.^[2] Jarrah was born in Lebanon to a wealthy family and experienced a secular upbringing.^[3] He intended to become a pilot and moved to Germany in 1996, enrolling at the University of Greifswald to study German.^[4] A year later, he moved to Hamburg and began studying aeronautical engineering at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.^[5] While living in Hamburg, Jarrah became a devout Muslim and associated with the radical Hamburg cell.^[5][6]
In November 1999, Jarrah left Hamburg and went to Afghanistan, where he spent three months.^[7] While there, he met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in January 2000.^[8] Jarrah returned to Hamburg at the end of January and obtained a clean passport in February by reporting his passport as stolen.^[9][10]
In May, Jarrah received a visa from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin,^[11] and he arrived in Florida in June 2000. There, he began taking flying lessons as well as training in hand-to-hand combat.^[12][13] Jarrah maintained contact with his girlfriend in Germany and his family in the months preceding the attacks.^[14] This close contact upset Mohamed Atta, the tactical leader of the plot, and al-Qaeda planners may have considered another operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, to replace him if he backed out.^[15] Soon after the attacks, Jarrah's family asserted that he was an "innocent passenger" onboard the flight.^[16]
Three "muscle" hijackers trained to storm the cockpit and overpower the crew accompanied Jarrah on Flight 93.^[17] One of them, Ahmed al-Nami, arrived in Miami, Florida, on May 28, 2001, on a six-month tourist visa with United Airlines Flight 175 hijackers Hamza al-Ghamdi and Mohand al-Shehri. Another Flight 93 hijacker, Ahmed al-Haznawi, arrived in Miami on June 8 with Flight 11 hijacker Wail al-Shehri. The third Flight 93 muscle hijacker, Saeed al-Ghamdi, arrived in Orlando, Florida, on June 27 with Flight 175 hijacker Fayez Banihammad.^[12] Passports of Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi were recovered from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93 was United Airlines' scheduled morning transcontinental flight across the United States from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco International Airport in California. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the Boeing 757–222 aircraft operating the route was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists as part of the September 11 attacks. It subsequently crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania near Shanksville during an attempt by some of the passengers to regain control.
The hijackers breached the aircraft's cockpit and overpowered the flight crew approximately 46 minutes after takeoff. Ziad Jarrah, a trained pilot, then took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the east coast of the United States. Although the evidence remains inconclusive, it is widely presumed the intended target was the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.^[1] An alternative suggestion has been the White House, possibly in hopes of killing then-president George W. Bush. That morning, however, the president was visiting an elementary school in Florida.
After the hijackers took control of the plane, several passengers and flight attendants were able to make telephone calls and learn that attacks had been made on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. Some of the passengers then made an attempt to regain control of the aircraft. During the attempt, however, the plane crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, D.C. All on board, including the four hijackers, were killed. A few witnessed the impact from the ground and news agencies began reporting the event within an hour.
Subsequent analysis of the flight recorders recovered from the crash site revealed how the actions taken by the passengers prevented the aircraft from reaching the hijackers' intended target. Of the four aircraft hijacked on September 11 – the others were American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175 – United Airlines Flight 93 was the only one that failed to reach its hijackers' intended target.
A temporary memorial has stood on the site since the attacks; construction of the first phase of a permanent memorial at the crash site was dedicated on September 10, 2011.