The heroism on Flight 93

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Chicago Tribune Sept 13, 2001

Last decision: `They'll rush the terrorists'

By Steve Mills and Andrew Martin Tribune staff reporters

In the moments before United Airlines Flight 93 plunged nose-first into a scrubby field in western Pennsylvania, several passengers on the doomed airplane plotted a counterattack against the hijackers, an astounding act of heroism that may have averted a far greater disaster.

The details remained sketchy Wednesday, but the story that was emerging was about a handful of passengers who defiantly rose to an extraordinary challenge on what began as an ordinary flight taking people home from business trips, to a last trial before a yearlong sabbatical and, in one tragic case, to claim the body of a son who died in an automobile crash on his honeymoon.

The Boeing 757 was the only one of the four jetliners hijacked Tuesday not to strike a building. Investigators now believe the plane's hijackers may have been targeting either Camp David or another government site in Washington but crashed far short of their goal.

At least three passengers aboard the Newark to San Francisco flight talked to relatives in frantic phone calls, learned about the earlier attacks on New York's World Trade Center and then quickly devised a plan to revolt against their hijackers, whom they described as three Middle Eastern men brandishing knives and a red box they claimed was a bomb. They took a quick poll among themselves and decided they had no other option but to act against the terrorists.

Thomas Burnett Jr., 38, used his cellular phone to call his wife, Deena, at their northern California home four times after the terrorists commandeered the plane before it reached Cleveland and herded the passengers to the rear of the aircraft. During one conversation, Burnett urged his wife to contact authorities, and she immediately called 911.

"He told Deena, `I'm not going to just sit here--we're going to do something,'" Burnett's younger sister, Mary Margaret Burnett, 32, said from their parents' home in Minnesota. "The last call that he made, he said that there's three of us, and it looks like this plane, we're going to take it down."

Burnett told his wife that the terrorists had stabbed one passenger and that the flight crew had fought for control of the plane.

"He was asking her questions and trying to put the pieces together about what was happening in New York and what was happening on his flight," said D. Keith Grossman, president and chief executive officer of Thoratec Corp., a medical devices company in Pleasanton, Calif., where Burnett was chief operating officer.

"He called her back, and said he knew the plans, what the hijackers intended, and that they were all going to perish," Grossman said.

His last words

Burnett's last words to his wife, according to his sister, were, "I love you honey."

Another passenger, 31-year-old Jeremy Glick, called his wife at home in New Jersey from a seat-back phone and told her that he and several other passengers had decided to try to thwart the hijackers, according to Glick's uncle, Thomas Crowley. Glick told his wife that the plane had been hijacked by three Middle Eastern men brandishing knives and a red box that they claimed contained a bomb, Crowley said.

"The discussion went on for several minutes, then they made a decision, What the hell: They'll rush the terrorists," Crowley said.

Like Burnett, Glick learned about the terrorist attacks in New York from his wife and believed attempting to fight the terrorists was the only option, according to his uncle.

The terrorists herded the crew to the rear of the plane before taking over the controls, Crowley said. Law-enforcement officials could not confirm a struggle, but others suggested that something happened between the passengers and terrorists.

"It sure wasn't going to go down in rural Pennsylvania," said U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) at the crash site. "This wasn't the target; the target was Washington, D.C. Somebody made a heroic effort to keep the plane from hitting a populated area."

The plane crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday, exploding in a fireball that killed all 45 people aboard and left the plane in mostly small pieces.

Among the 38 passengers and seven crew members were Alan A. Beaven, an environmental lawyer from Oakland who was returning home for one last trial before taking a year's leave study in India, and John Talignani, who was flying to San Francisco to claim the body of his son Alan.

Search for black box

On Wednesday, more than 200 investigators began a meticulous search of the rural area in what officials said was the best chance of finding one of the four hijacked planes' black boxes.

"The black boxes probably survived the Pittsburgh crash, but I'm not sure about the other sites where the heat was intense enough to melt steel girders," said Barnes McCormick, an aeronautical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University.

UAL Flight 93 left Newark at 8:01 a.m. EDT on Tuesday. About 90 minutes later radar showed the plane heading back east. Air traffic controllers said they could hear screaming on the plane, Cleveland Mayor Michael White told reporters.

Aviation authorities in western Pennsylvania were warned about the approaching plane by Cleveland controllers. Witnesses reported seeing the plane weaving from side to side before the crash.

A passenger who had locked himself in the bathroom called 911 on his cell phone and told dispatchers repeatedly, "We're being hijacked!" The call was cut off after about a minute.

A few other passengers called loved ones to say goodbye.

"My wife just called to tell me she loved me dearly and to tell the boys she loved us," said Lorne Lyles, a Ft. Myers, Fla., police officer whose wife, CeeCee Lyles, 33, was a flight attendant on Flight 93.

Michael Bingham, a 31-year-old computer company executive from San Francisco, also called home. He told his mother that he loved her and that "it didn't look good." The phone then went dead.

His relatives said they were confident that Bingham, a 6-foot-5 former rugby player, would have taken part in any effort to take back the airplane from the hijackers.

"Just knowing the way his personality was, we feel quite sure that my nephew just defied the orders of the hijackers," said his uncle, Linden Hoagland.



-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 13, 2001


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