Among The Heroes – The Story of United Flight 93

“Mark, this is your mom. The news is that it has been hijacked by terrorists. They are planning to probably use the plane as a target to hit some site on the ground. If you possibly can, try to overpower these guys, ‘cause they’ll probably use the plane as a target. I would say, go ahead and do everything you can to overpower them, because they’re hell-bent. Try to call me back if you can…Okay, I love you sweetie, good-bye.” – Message left by Alice Hoglan on her son Mark Bingham’s cell phone on 9/11 after she received a phone call from him a few minutes earlier that his plane has been hijacked. He probably never received those messages.

Todd Beamer reached an operator from the GTE phone taken from a seatback of Flight 93 and told her that a few of the passengers were going to “jump” the hijacker with the bomb and try to regain the control of the plane. He told her, “At this point, I don’t have much choice. I’m going to go out on faith.” A few minutes later, he seemed to turn away from the phone and speak with someone else. “You ready,” he said. “Okay. Let’s roll”. Those were his known last words.

Tom Burnett spoke with his wife, getting information about the other suicide bomb attacks that occurred earlier, and told his wife, “If they’re going to crash the plane into the ground, we’re going to do something… It’s up to us. I think we can do it.” His last words to her were, “Don’t worry. We’re going to do something”.

United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco started off like on any other day on September 11, 2011. There were seven crew members and 37 passengers that day in a plane with a capacity of one hundred eighty-two. Fifteen of the passengers were inadvertent travelers on that flight, having made travel plans at the last minute or having switched planes. Four of the passengers were in the plane with a purpose. They were on a suicide mission to take over the plane and crash it into a preselected target. It is thought that the target was either the White House or the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

At eight-forty two am, the plane lifted off. At nine-thirty two am, the hijackers had control of the plane. Subsequently, the Cleveland air traffic control tower lost contact with the plane and the transponders on the plane were apparently turned off. At 10:03:11, the plane crashed into a reclaimed strip mine in Stony Creek Township, near Shanksville, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. There were no survivors. There were no casualties on the ground. From the cockpit recordings, it was clear that the passengers mounted a revolt and were trying to crash into the cockpit by ramming a food cart thru the door and the plane crashed much earlier than the hijackers planned. It is believed that the action of the passengers saved US from another major plane crash into a strategic target and resultant losses.

Jere Longman, a reporter for New York Times, interviewed the families, relatives and friends of the passengers and crew and reconstructed the final flight of United 93. In doing so, he also introduces us to each of them and their families; their dreams, their aspirations and the shattered lives left behind.

In the 70s, we had a series of disaster films about airplanes getting into a difficult situation in mid-air (until the 1980 film Airplane brilliantly spoofed them). The films would begin with the crew and the passengers checking into the plane; the disaster strikes; some of the passengers act heroic; and, finally a dramatic rescue, albeit with some losses.

The book seems to follow the same path. However, this is not fiction. These were real people. And, there was neither a rescue nor any survivors. But, in the death of their passengers was a rescue of gigantic proportions.

More importantly, Longman did not just pick a few main characters to focus. He researched all of the passengers and crew except for three of the hijackers. He tries to give each of them and their families their place in the book. That makes this a particularly difficult book to write. In essence, he is telling us forty two stories at the same time. This could easily have become a long repetitive saga (remember JP Datta’s Border?), confusing and exhausting. Longman should be credited for keeping the reader’s attention focused.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the destruction did not leave any heroes. Nine eleven was an equally dark day; however, the determined resistance of the passengers on United 93 caught the imagination of people and they became heroes for a population that was bewildered. In their death, these heroes gave everybody a sense of determination and purpose. The stories about some of them have been available spread across various media outlets and the opening chapter of the 9/11 commission report describes the events of flight 93 in some detail. But, this book covers much more ground, and in significant detail. As is the norm, Longman lists his sources for all the chapters and there is a detailed index.

There were some points in this book that were particularly poignant. It is still difficult for me to picture a mother exhorting her son to risk his life to avert a larger disaster, or to contemplate a wife taking a phone call from her husband and holding an open phone line waiting in the vain hope that he will return to it. It is amazing how in the face of adversity, ordinary people take leadership roles and courageous decisions that we find hard to contemplate in everyday life.

Sometimes, life is more dramatic and ironic than fiction. Longman’s book underlines that, with a lot of empathy and without much overstatement.

Among the Heroes
Jere Longman
2002
Harper Collins Publishers
288 pages.
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