Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

For some minutes, passenger Elizabeth Wainio, a Discovery Channel store manager, had been on the line to her mother. She had been quiet, her breathing shallow—as if she were already letting go, her mother thought. Her deceased grandmothers were waiting for her, Wainio said. Then: “They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you. Goodbye.”

Sandra Bradshaw, the flight attendant who had earlier phoned to alert the airline, now got through to her husband. She was in the galley, she said, boiling water for the passengers to throw on the hijackers. Then, “Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye …”

CeeCee Lyles, Bradshaw’s fellow crew member, also got through to her husband, told him rapidly about the hijacking, that she loved him. Then, “I think they’re going to do it. Babe, they’re forcing their way into the cockpit …”

The Cockpit Voice Recorder registered the moment the hijackers realized what was happening. At just before 9:58, a hijacker asks, “Is there something? … A fight?” There is a knock on the door, followed by sounds of fighting. Then, in Arabic, “Let’s go, guys! Allah is Greatest. Allah is Greatest. Oh guys! Allah is Greatest … Oh Allah! Oh Allah! Oh the most Gracious!” Then, loudly, “Stay back!”

A male voice, a native-English-speaking voice that Tom Burnett’s wife has recognized as that of her husband, is heard saying, “In the cockpit. In the cockpit.”

Followed by a voice exclaiming, in Arabic, “They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside … Hold.”

Then, from several English speakers in unison, “Hold the door …” And from a single English speaker, “Stop him,” followed repeatedly by “Sit down! Sit down!” Then, again from an English speaker, “Let’s get them …”

Flight 93, now down to five thousand feet, had begun rolling left and right. The pilot of a light aircraft, on a mapping assignment for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, saw the airliner at about this moment. “The wings started to rock,” he recalled. “The rocking stopped and started again. A violent rocking back and forth.”

Jeremy Glick’s father-in-law, listening intently on the phone his daughter had handed him, now heard screams in the background. On the Cockpit Voice Recorder, there is the sound of combat continuing. Then, in Arabic:

“There is nothing … Shall we finish it off?”

“No. Not yet.”

“When they all come, we finish it off.”

Then, from Tom Burnett: “I am injured.”

The Flight Data Recorder indicates that the plane pitched up and down, climbed to ten thousand feet, turned. Glick’s father-in-law, phone clapped to his ear, heard more shrieks, muffled now, like those of people “riding on a roller coaster.”

In Arabic, on the voice recorder, “Oh Allah! Oh Allah! Oh Gracious!”

In English, “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die!”

In Arabic, “Up down. Up down … Up down!”

From a distance, perhaps from Todd Beamer, “Roll it!”

Crashing sounds, then, in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! … Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?”

“Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.”

“Cut off the oxygen! Cut off the oxygen! Cut off the oxygen! … Up down. Up, down … Up down.”

More violent noises, for as long as a minute, then—apparently by a native English speaker: “Shut them off! … Go! … Go! … Move! … Move! … Turn it up.”

In Arabic, “Down, down … Pull it down! Pull it down! DOWN!”

Apparently from an English speaker, “Down. Push, push, push, push, push … push.”

In Arabic, “Hey! Hey! Give it to me. Give it to me … Give it to me. Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me.”

Intermittent loud “air noise” on the cockpit recorder.

Moments later, in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

Sounds of further struggle, and a loud shout by a native English speaker, “No!!!”

Two seconds later, in Arabic, in a whisper now, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

Jeremy Glick’s father-in-law, still listening on the ground, heard high-pitched screams coming over the line Glick had left open when he left to join the rush to the cockpit. Then “wind sounds” followed by banging noises, as though the phone aboard the plane was repeatedly banging on a hard surface.

After that, silence on the phone. Silence on the Cockpit Voice Recorder. Then, in less than a second, the recording ended.

NEAR THE LITTLE TOWN of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a man working in a scrapyard had seen an airliner, flying low but seemingly trying to climb, just clear a nearby ridge. The assistant chief of Shanksville’s volunteer fire department had been talking on the phone with his sister, who said she could see a large airplane “nosediving, falling like a stone.” A witness who saw it from his porch said it made a “sort of whistling” noise.

Half a mile away, another man saw the final plunge. It was “barely fifty feet above me,” he said, “rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly dipped and it just crashed … There was this big fireball and then a huge cloud of smoke.”

United Airlines Flight #93 Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript

Key:

Bolded text= English translation from Arabic

10:00:06

There is nothing

.

10:00:07

Is that it? Shall we finish it off?

10:00:08

No. Not yet

.

10:00:09

When they all come, we finish it off

.

10:00:11

There is nothing

.

10:00:13

Unintelligible.

10:00:14

Ahh

.

10:00:15

I’m injured

.

10:00:16

Unintelligible.

10:00:21

Ahh

.

10:00:22

Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh Gracious

.

10:00:25

In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll

die

.

10:00:29

Up, down. Up, down, in the

cockpit

10:00:33

The

cockpit

.

10:00:37

Up, down. Saeed, up, down

.

10:00:42

Roll it

10:00:55

Unintelligible.

10:00:59

Allah is the Greatest. Allah is the Greatest

.

10:01:01

Unintelligible.

10:01:08

Is that it? 1 mean, shall we pull it down?

10:01:09

Yes, put it in it, and pull it down

.

10:01:10

Unintelligible.

10:01:11

Saeed

.

10:01:12

… engine …

10:01:13

Unintelligible.

10:01:16

Cut off the oxygen

.

It was 10:03. Thirty-five minutes had passed since the hijackers struck, four minutes since the passengers counterattacked.

The grave of Flight 93 and the men and women it had carried was an open field bounded by woods on the site of a former strip mine.

“Where’s the plane crash?” thought a state police lieutenant, one of the first to reach the scene. “All there was was a hole in the ground and a smoking debris pile.” The crater was on fire, and the plane itself had seemingly vanished. On first inspection, there seemed to be few items on the surface more than a couple of feet long. The voice recorder, recovered days later, would be found buried twelve feet under the ground. There were no bodies, it appeared, only shreds of clothing hanging from the trees. For a while, a white cloud of “sparkly, shiny stuff like confetti” floated in the sky.