Page 19 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2009

19 The Story of Flight 93 19 The Story of Flight 93 The heroes of Flight 93: conduct fairly lengthy, even repeated Lyzbeth Glick said on "Good Morning America. Interviews with family and conversations during the plane's final minutes, "I trusted his instincts, and I constructing a jumbled puzzle of what was said, 'Do what you have to do.' I knew that I friends detail the courage of happening inside the Boeing 757. thought he could do it." Beamer, 32, an account manager for Deena Burnett was feeding her three everyday people. daughters breakfast and watching the news in Oracle, called a stranger. He picked up a seat- Continues from Page 18 horror when the telephone rang in her home in back phone and hit "0," and at 9:45 a.m., he was San Ramon, Calif. connected first to a dispatcher for GTE Airfone, They appeared to be the pilot and co- "Are you OK?" she asked her husband, and then to Lisa Jefferson, the pilot, he said, relating information from a flight Tom, 38. operator's supervisor. attendant. Another told a friend that two "No," he said. "I'm on the airplane and For 13 minutes, Beamer told Jefferson people's throats were slit but didn't identify it's been hijacked." everything he could, passing along information them. A third saw only one injured. He told his wife the hijackers had he gleaned himself and from a flight attendant. At least five passengers and flight stabbed someone. He told her to call the The passengers remained in their seats, she said attendants described the hijackers in their calls authorities, and he hung up. he told her, and the flight attendants were forced in similar terms: three men, wearing red When he called back, she was on the line to sit in the back of the plane. bandannas, one with some sort of box strapped to the FBI. She told him about the World Trade He told her how much he loved his around his waist that he claimed was a bomb. Center, the first he knew of the attack. He pregnant wife and two sons, and he asked her to One passenger reported that two of the hijackers paused. "Were they commercial airplanes?" he call them. He asked her to recite the Lord's were in the cockpit and a third guarded asked. Prayer and 23rd Psalm with him. passengers in first class from behind a curtain. Deena Burnett didn't think so. Cargo or Moments later, Beamer told Jefferson None of the callers mentioned a fourth private planes, she said. about the plan, that the passengers were going hijacker, although the FBI has identified four "Do you know anything else about the to run up the long, narrow aisle to the first-class men in connection with the hijacking. planes?" No, she said. cabin and attack the hijacker there. Those men are Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed "Do you know who was involved?" "I'm going to have to go out on faith," Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami and Again, she said no. Beamer said. Ziad Jarrah. He told her the man who was stabbed He turned to someone else, and he said, It may be that the people who made calls had died. "Are you ready?" Then, in the last words were unable to see the fourth hijacker. Some The hijackers are talking about running Jefferson would hear from him, "OK. Let's roll." news reports have suggested one may have the plane into the ground, he said. Then he said Sandra Bradshaw, the flight attendant, already gained access to the cockpit, as an he had to go. also identified three hijackers when she called uniformed guest pilot sitting in the spare jump- His third call came about 9:41 a.m., her husband in Greensboro, N.C. She had been seat. Or, some terrorism experts suggest, he may shortly after a plane had hit the Pentagon. "OK," moved to the back of the plane, she said, but she have played a role as a backup, perhaps he said. "We're going to do something." and other passengers had a plan. They were remaining unidentified among the other In his fourth and final call, just before 10 going to rush their captors; she was boiling passengers or hiding in the bathroom until he a.m., Burnett said he was sure the hijackers water to throw on them. was needed. didn't have a bomb, that he thought they had Another passenger, Elizabeth Wainio, A Justice Department spokeswoman only knives. also apparently talked of a plan to rush the said Friday that their "best information" shows "There's a group of us who are going to hijackers. In a call she made to her stepmother that four were involved. do something," he repeated. in Baltimore, using the cell phone lent to her by By 9:36 a.m., United Flight 93 had Deena Burnett thought about her years Lauren Grandcolas, she said, "I've got to go suddenly changed course, according to flight- of training as a flight attendant. She was taught now, Mom, they're breaking into the cockpit," path information provided by Flight Explorer, a to appease hijackers, to meet their demands, to according to the mother of another passenger, firm that supplies real-time radar tracking data. stay in the background. She told her husband to who said she spoke with family members about The plane had made a U-turn and headed back sit down. "Don't draw attention to the call. Wainio's parents declined comment. toward Washington. yourself," she said. The accounts of these calls — if In the cabin, passengers frantically She told him she loved him. She felt he accurate — would indicate that at least four began making calls, 23 from the seat-back thought he was coming home that night. This people were somehow plotting to attack the phones alone from 9:31 to 9:53 a.m. Others was simply a problem that he was going to hijackers. If Beamer's report is accurate, they passed cell phones to people who had been solve, as he had solved many others. were seated in different sections of the plane, strangers just minutes before. As Burnett talked with his wife, three with Bingham and Burnett up front, while the Why so many people were able to make other men who may have joined him in others were in the back. calls while apparently under guard by hijackers whatever plans were being hatched made calls It may be there were separate plans to could be that, as one passenger reported, there of their own. take the plane or that somehow, amid all the was no hijacker among the passengers in coach. Across the aisle in Seat 4D, Mark telephone calls, chaos and fear, the passengers Some of the telephone calls were short Bingham, 31, called his mother. He was so were able to communicate with each other. — no more than a few rushed words of fear or rattled that when Alice Hoglan got on the line, If they did, they may have known they love. her son told her, "This is Mark Bingham." had another pilot among them, Donald Greene, Lauren Grandcolas, flying home to San His message was brief: The plane had chief executive officer of Safe Flight Instrument Rafael, Calif., from her grandmother's funeral, been hijacked by three men and he loved her. in New York. Greene, according to his family, left a message for her husband saying her flight In the rear of the plane, Jeremy Glick, knew anything and everything about airplanes. had been hijacked but she was "comfortable, for also 31, a sales manager for a Web site firm and At about 9:54 a.m., the plane started now." former judo champion, called his wife from a flying erratically. In Oak Brook, Ill., Jefferson Linda Gronlund and Joe Deluca, on their seat-back phone. He described three Middle heard screams in the way to San Francisco for a vacation together, Eastern men brandishing knives background. took turns. She called her sister to say she would and a red box. Two minutes later, the plane's flight plan miss her. He called his father. His wife told him about the attacks at the changed. The destination airport was changed "The plane's been hijacked," he said. "I World Trade Center. He tried to grasp the from San Francisco International to Ronald love you." hijackers' plans — to blow up the plane or fly it Reagan National Airport. Estimated time of Andrew Garcia, an Air National Guard into a target? arrival: 10:28 a.m. air traffic controller and plane buff, only The passengers had taken a vote among managed to get out his wife's name, "Dorothy," themselves, he said. They had decided to try to before his phone went dead. take back the plane. CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 Other passengers, though, managed to "I told him to go ahead and do it,"