Heroes: The Story of Flight 93

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Speaker 4 But here's the first confirmation from United Airlines. One of its flights crashed in the Pittsburgh area at Flight 93 of Boeing 757.

Speaker 5 My mom, Cece, is on flight 93.

Speaker 6 She was a flight attendant.

Speaker 7 There was an explosion that was smoke on the plane leaving a grass and field.

Speaker 8 All on board that United flight were killed.

Speaker 12 My dad was named Tom Burnett, and he was a passenger on Flight 93.

Speaker 13 Linda was seated in first class row two.

Speaker 16 Crashing into the White House.

Speaker 3 Lauren was seated in 11D.

Speaker 17 She was three months pregnant with our first child.

Speaker 18 What happened above this Pennsylvania field ranks among the most courageous acts in American history?

Speaker 6 One World Trade Center, Freedom Tower, a shining tribute to American spirit and resilience two decades after 9-11.

Speaker 6 Good evening and welcome to Dateline. I'm Lester Holt.
9-11 was the worst act of terrorism this country has ever seen, but it inspired one of the most astonishing acts of bravery.

Speaker 6 Tonight, the heroes of Flight 93, the lives they lived, the people they loved, and the courage that inspired the nation.

Speaker 3 Their names are etched in white marble. One panel for each.

Speaker 3 40 ordinary men and women who decided to do the extraordinary when it counted most, sacrificing themselves so that others might live.

Speaker 3 In those harrowing days right after the crash, we spoke to family members still reeling from final phone calls home.

Speaker 19 He was not interested in reviewing his life or

Speaker 19 whispering sweet nothings into the telephone.

Speaker 20 I assure you, he was

Speaker 11 problem-solving.

Speaker 3 Now, 20 years later, they look back.

Speaker 21 I really felt as if part of me had died.

Speaker 3 We also speak to some of the children of Flight 93 coming together for the first time.

Speaker 5 I find myself wondering if any of your parents interacted with each other on that plane. Absolutely.

Speaker 13 I mean, they were with each other in their last moments.

Speaker 20 Maybe comforted each other other as well.

Speaker 3 Sons and daughters determined that future generations will know their parents' story.

Speaker 23 On Flight 93, they took a vote and they did something for the greater good of the country.

Speaker 3 September 11th dawned severe clear, as pilots call it, crisp, blue skies.

Speaker 3 United 93 Newark to San Francisco had all the makings of a routine flight. With just 44 people on board, the 757 would be mostly empty.
Good news for passengers looking to stretch out.

Speaker 18 Little did they know they would soon be face to face with terror.

Speaker 3 Boarding the flight that morning was aviation executive Don Green, his wife, Claudette.

Speaker 13 This is a guy who came home every Friday from work with flowers for me. His His greatest joy was being at home for dinner every single night.

Speaker 3 Son Charlie was 10 on September 11th. Daughter Jodi was six.

Speaker 26 My dad was the kind of guy that would just get right into the ball pit with us.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 26 wasn't standing off to the side with the other parents. He was breaking the rules and being a part of the experience that we were all sharing together.

Speaker 3 Taking a seat in first class was businessman Tom Burnett. He had three children waiting for him at home in California.
Five-year-old twins Madison and Hallie, and three-year-old Anna Clare.

Speaker 5 Anna Clare, I understand you have your father's wit.

Speaker 8 That's what I'm told. She definitely does.

Speaker 5 Hallie, you have his eyes?

Speaker 13 I have his eyes.

Speaker 3 Madison, what do you have?

Speaker 22 Probably his practicality.

Speaker 3 Oh, she's got one here. The COO of a medical technology company, Tom met his wife Dina back when she was training to be a flight attendant.

Speaker 21 There was no one else like him.

Speaker 27 He was confident. He was intelligent.

Speaker 10 He was outspoken and dynamic.

Speaker 3 Sitting two rows in front of Tom was another dynamo, Linda Gronlin, a take-charge manager at BMW. She and her boyfriend, Joe DeLuca, were off to celebrate her birthday in Wine Country.

Speaker 3 She called her sister Elsa from the terminal.

Speaker 7 What was her mood?

Speaker 14 Oh, it was great.

Speaker 13 She was leaving on a trip and she was excited.

Speaker 18 How old was she going to be?

Speaker 30 47.

Speaker 3 Marketing director Lauren Grancolis was traveling home after her grandmother's funeral, but she had reason to be happy. After years of trying, she and her husband Jack were expecting a baby.

Speaker 17 We finally decided we're 38 years old. If it doesn't happen, we'll be happy with, you know, cats instead of kids.

Speaker 5 So it was a good time in your lives.

Speaker 17 We were on as fast a track and a high a road as any couple could have been at that time.

Speaker 3 Lauren wasn't supposed to be on United 93, but she got to the airport early. She left a message for Jack, who was at home asleep in California.

Speaker 31 Hey, I just want to let you know I'm on 8 o'clock instead of the 9:20.

Speaker 31 So I get to San Francisco at about 11, and I'll be at the ferry terminal probably

Speaker 15 a little before 12, okay? So, how are you then? Bye.

Speaker 3 Lauren was one of at least 10 passengers who switched to United 93 last minute.

Speaker 3 Father of two, Todd Beamer, was another. Todd's wife, Lisa, was one of the family members who spoke to us right after the crash.

Speaker 32 He and I had just gotten back from Italy Monday afternoon, and he wanted to spend some time with the kids that night and have a little more time before he flew out, so he decided to try to crunch his travel in in the morning.

Speaker 3 Jeremy Glick's original flight had been canceled. He and his wife Liz had just welcomed their first child.
She also talked to us back in 2001.

Speaker 33 He didn't want to go and I said you have to go.

Speaker 33 You know,

Speaker 33 you can't say no to your company. You need to go out on your business trip.

Speaker 3 Everything seemed normal to the passengers as the cabin door closed, but they were about to become part of a horrifying terrorist attack. One that involved not just one, but four passenger planes.

Speaker 3 Sitting in first class, right near the cockpit, were four hijackers. One was trained as a pilot, the other three there to seize control of the plane.

Speaker 34 They were known as the Muscle Hijackers.

Speaker 3 Mitchell Zhukov is the author of Fall and Rise, the story of 9-11.

Speaker 34 Their role was to brutalize, to murder, to instill fear in the passengers and crew.

Speaker 35 United 93, understand you ready for the taxi?

Speaker 3 At 8.01 a.m., United 93 backed away from the gate. Runway traffic at Newark caused a delay of about a half hour, time that would turn out to be critical.
At 8.42, the plane took off, headed west.

Speaker 3 A few more minutes on the ground, and the passengers might have seen this just across the river. The world says that parallel number one is on fire.

Speaker 3 They didn't know it yet, but the attack on America had begun.

Speaker 3 By 9 a.m., United 93 was cruising comfortably at about 35,000 feet on its way to San Francisco.

Speaker 34 Folks are settling in in the back, you know, thinking about a movie or some sleep. You know, maybe you start smelling the coffee brewing.

Speaker 3 And you know, I'll be here for a little while.

Speaker 3 It seemed like an everyday flight, but down on the ground, chaos was starting to unfold.

Speaker 3 The passengers didn't know it, but 45 minutes earlier, at around 8.14 a.m., terrorists hijacked the first of the four flights, American 11, en route from Boston to Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 Air traffic controllers realized what was happening when they heard a chilling message from the cockpit.

Speaker 3 Everything will be okay.

Speaker 3 They had tried to contact the plane but got no response and could only watch as the flight abruptly changed course and and headed toward New York City.

Speaker 34 The expectation of hijackings was if someone hijacks your plane, you try to accommodate them to make sure that people get onto the ground safely.

Speaker 34 And then Flight 11 changed the rules in real time because the terrorist pilot suddenly started flying the plane, not making demands, but turning it into a guided missile.

Speaker 3 At 8.46, the terrorists reached their target, smashing the plane into the World Trade Center's North Tower.

Speaker 3 The World Trade said that world number one is on fire.

Speaker 3 Don Green's wife, Claudette, was home after dropping her kids off at school.

Speaker 13 I turned the TV on.

Speaker 25 It was like...

Speaker 3 What was your reaction?

Speaker 13 I thought it was horrible, and there was speculation at that point that it was just a small airplane, that somebody may have had a heart attack at the controls.

Speaker 5 So terrorism wasn't the first thought that came to your mind?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 3 But terrorism would consume everyone's mind 15 minutes later. At 9.03, another hijacked flight out of Boston, United 175, ripped into the South Tower.

Speaker 3 Oh, another one just hit.

Speaker 36 Something else just hit. A very large plane just flew directly over my building.

Speaker 3 Elsa Strong was in her car listening to the radio when the station broke in. Right away, she thought about her sister Linda on flight 93.

Speaker 37 And immediately,

Speaker 21 I just,

Speaker 13 I knew Lynn was up in the air at that point or close to it.

Speaker 5 Presumably there were a lot of airplanes in the air at that moment.

Speaker 14 Thousands, right?

Speaker 5 What were the odds?

Speaker 27 Exactly.

Speaker 3 Jerome Smith was anxiously following the news as well. His mom, Cece Lyles, was a flight attendant on United 93.

Speaker 3 He was 16 and in high school science class when the towers were struck. He ran out and called her cell phone.

Speaker 5 I didn't get an answer.

Speaker 6 I went straight to voice mail. Do you remember what you said in that message?

Speaker 5 I was saying, hey, I love you. I see this on TV.
You know, I just want to make sure you're okay.

Speaker 3 Cece was a former cop who had only been a flight attendant for nine months on 9-11. Javon, who was six, is her youngest.
Javon, were you proud of your mom?

Speaker 5 I mean, she put on her uniform and go fly for a living? Yeah, I was proud, but I missed her. I wanted her her to come back all the time.

Speaker 3 Working alongside Cece in the rear galley of the plane was flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw. Her daughter, Alex, was just two on 9-11.

Speaker 38 She was independent and beautiful, and everybody always says that my smile is similar to hers, which I love hearing that.

Speaker 3 Sandy's husband, Phil, a pilot for U.S. Airways, had tried to convince her to skip the flight.
They crossed paths at the airport on September 10th.

Speaker 16 As I was coming home, she was leaving. And I was begging her to come home.
Just scrap this month. Just go home with me.
And she's like, no, I'll just do this one trip, and it'll be fine.

Speaker 3 Sandy would later speak to Phil from Flight 93, and things wouldn't be fine at all. But in those early moments, as the plane soared over western Pennsylvania, everything seemed normal.

Speaker 3 The pilots relayed a routine update to air traffic control.

Speaker 3 But terror was about to engulf the cabin. At 9.23 a.m., a United Flight Dispatcher sent a warning message to the pilots.
Beware any cockpit intrusion, it said. Two aircraft hit World Trade Center.

Speaker 3 The pilots responded at 9.26.

Speaker 34 Saying, confirm message, please. He's like, what's going on? But by then, it's almost too late.

Speaker 3 Moments later, the terrorists breached the cockpit.

Speaker 3 The takeover of United 93 was underway.

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Speaker 15 It was unbelievable seeing this

Speaker 36 second jet come crashing into the second tower.

Speaker 9 What is going on?

Speaker 36 It just exploded.

Speaker 3 As more and more Americans tuned in to the frightening scenes in lower Manhattan, they didn't know that above northeastern Ohio, another attack was just beginning.

Speaker 3 It was 9:28 when terrorists stormed the cockpit of United 93. The plane plummeted 700 feet.
Air traffic controllers heard the assault in real time.

Speaker 3 The hijackers quickly subdued the pilots and herded the passengers to the back of the plane.

Speaker 34 All four flights had this plan of action of get into the cockpit, take over the flight, and get everyone else as far away from the cockpit as possible.

Speaker 3 In the middle of the takeover, Tom Burnett somehow found a way to call his wife Dina.

Speaker 21 I said, are you okay?

Speaker 22 And he said, no, I'm not.

Speaker 28 I'm on United Airlines Flight 93,

Speaker 21 Newark to San Francisco, and the plane has been hijacked. I need you to call the authorities.

Speaker 3 He said the hijackers had a bomb and had stabbed a passenger.

Speaker 22 My body just stood still, and I could not believe that what I was watching on television and I thought was 2,000 miles away was now happening in my living room.

Speaker 24 And I started fumbling through the phone book, trying to figure out who to call, who do I call.

Speaker 28 I called 911.

Speaker 31 They just called me from the airplane, United Airlines Flight 93. The hotel authorities know the plane has been hijacked.

Speaker 35 They just knived the passengers.

Speaker 3 At 9:32, a hijacker tried to deliver a message to the cabin, but pressed the wrong button and ended up speaking to the controllers.

Speaker 3 He turned the plane around and set course for Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 The cockpit voice recorder recovered at the crash site reveals what happened next.

Speaker 34 There was a woman, we believe was a flight attendant, who was in the cockpit who was brutally murdered.

Speaker 3 The recording itself hasn't been released, but a transcript has been made public.

Speaker 34 She's begging for her life. She's begging not to be hurt.
And they ignore her, and one says it's finished.

Speaker 3 Huddled in the back of the cabin, the passengers grabbed the earphones built into the back of their seats and started making calls, about 30 of them in the next 25 minutes.

Speaker 3 In an era before smartphones or social media, it was their best way to communicate. At 9.35, flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw reported the hijacking to a United maintenance facility.

Speaker 3 The person she reached described her as shockingly calm. A couple of minutes later, Jeremy Glick called his wife.

Speaker 33 He had said there were some very bad men that had come onto the plane. He said that they were Arabic-looking men.
I think he said that they were wearing red headbands.

Speaker 3 Passenger Todd Beamer picked up a phone and dialed zero. He told an airphone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson what he knew.
She talked to us back in 2001.

Speaker 30 The hijacker with the bomb pulled the curtain to in first class so they couldn't see what was going on. But he did see two people that were on the floor in the front of the plane appeared to be hurt.

Speaker 30 He couldn't tell if they were dead or alive.

Speaker 3 While they were talking, the plane lurched.

Speaker 30 His voice went up a little bit because he said, we're going down. We're going down.
No, wait, we're coming back up. At this point, I don't know where we're going.
I don't know. I really don't know.

Speaker 30 Oh, Jesus, please help us. Then he told me, he said, in case I don't make it through this, would you please do me a favor and call my wife and my family and let them know how much I love them?

Speaker 30 So I told him I would.

Speaker 3 The passengers weren't just relaying information in these calls. They were learning things too.

Speaker 3 Thanks to that earlier delay on the runway, they had time to find out that their hijacking wasn't an isolated event. Tom Burnett again called Dina.

Speaker 22 That's when I told him that there were planes being hijacked up and down the East Coast, that they were being used as missiles going into buildings.

Speaker 43 And he turned and told people around him what I was saying.

Speaker 5 At this point, you're beginning to piece together the broader picture of what's happening.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 42 We're looking at live pictures of the Pentagon where there is billowing smoke making.

Speaker 3 Not long after they hung up, news of a third plane crash. At 9.37, American Flight 77, en route from DC to LA, smashed into the Pentagon.
Dina fell apart.

Speaker 22 I was certain that it was Tom's flight

Speaker 43 and just began to wail,

Speaker 22 absolutely wail.

Speaker 43 in

Speaker 28 grief.

Speaker 21 I was glued to the television trying to figure out could there have been survivors.

Speaker 3 But she says Tom called yet again. He was alive and he told her something astonishing.

Speaker 21 He began telling me that they were going to take back the plane and not to worry, everything was going to be okay.

Speaker 3 It was almost impossible to believe on a plane hijacked at 35,000 feet, a group of strangers was teaming up and making a plan to strike back.

Speaker 3 On the morning of September 11th, Tom Burnett's young daughters could see something was very wrong. Their mom was distraught.

Speaker 20 I remember seeing my mom absolutely wailing.

Speaker 19 And being five years old, it's incredibly

Speaker 20 traumatic.

Speaker 12 It scared me and so I got up from the breakfast table and I just remember like hiding behind the couch just kind of like watching what was going on but having no idea what was happening.

Speaker 3 Dina Burnett says her husband told her something extraordinary. He and the other passengers were talking about how they could fight back against the terrorists.

Speaker 21 Listening to him talk about taking back the cockpit or moving forward or attacking these hijackers was very frightening.

Speaker 3 But not entirely surprising. She says Tom collected books about American military history.

Speaker 43 And he would say, you know, I wonder if I would have that kind of courage.

Speaker 21 I wonder what it would be like to march into battle knowing you were going to die.

Speaker 7 He reflected on these search effects.

Speaker 3 Tom Burnett wasn't the only person on that flight you'd want in your corner.

Speaker 34 You had one after another people who were type A plus, some people described them as.

Speaker 3 Among among them mark bingham was a rugby player who stood six foot four

Speaker 3 jeremy glick was a one-time judo champ and cece lyles patrolled some rough streets in her days as a police officer i've literally seen her chase people and i mean men her own her size you know bigger she's not the type that was going to sit by there's no way without no way without no way she's she's in the front and they're going to do what they have to do and passenger don Don Green had a skill that may have been crucial to the team.

Speaker 13 He got his pilot's license before he got his driver's license.

Speaker 3 Green worked in aviation and flew this amphibious plane in his spare time.

Speaker 36 Pilot Charlie.

Speaker 18 Often with his son Charlie.

Speaker 18 Could you have imagined him at the controls and safely bringing that plane back?

Speaker 26 With help from a control tower, there's no question that he would have been able to land that aircraft.

Speaker 3 In the back of the jet, the passengers and crew started to band together and compared notes about all those horrific reports from loved ones on the ground.

Speaker 34 They sort of collectively realized that what happened in the North Tower, what happened in the South Tower, what happened to the Pentagon is about to happen to them.

Speaker 3 As they debated what to do, passengers began leaving messages for their families. At 9:39 a.m., Lauren Grancoulas called her husband Jack.

Speaker 3 Honey, are you there?

Speaker 9 Jack, pick up, sweetie.

Speaker 31 Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you I love you. We're having a little problem on the plane.

Speaker 31 I'm totally fine.

Speaker 31 I just love you more than anything. Just know that.

Speaker 31 It's a little problem, so I'll

Speaker 31 just love you. Please tell my family I love them, too.

Speaker 31 Bye, honey.

Speaker 3 Just a little problem. Jack only heard the message after he woke up that morning.

Speaker 17 She was protecting me. She was calm as could be.
It was probably the bravest message you could ever expect.

Speaker 3 Minutes after Lauren's call at 9.46, Linda Groundland phoned her sister Elsa and left her own message.

Speaker 35 Elsa, it's Lynn.

Speaker 35 I only have a minute. I'm on United 93 and it's been hijacked by by terrorists who say they have a bomb.
Mostly, I just wanted to say I love you and I'm gonna miss you.

Speaker 35 All my stuff is in the safe.

Speaker 35 The safe is in my closet in my bedroom. I love you and I hope I can talk to you soon.

Speaker 15 Bye.

Speaker 3 Elsa got home minutes later and saw her answering machine blinking.

Speaker 13 At that moment, I just

Speaker 8 wanted to go back.

Speaker 13 I wanted to go back in time. Like 10 minutes, you know, then I would have been able to speak with her myself.

Speaker 3 As the passengers struggled to say their goodbyes, they decided to take a vote.

Speaker 34 In a matter of minutes, a group of strangers came together and said, let's vote on an action. I mean, my God, what a powerful endorsement of democracy.

Speaker 3 With that, they quickly formed an attack plan. Jeremy Glick told his wife what they were thinking.
At first, she was worried. It was too risky.

Speaker 33 You know, I finally just decided, honey, you need to do it.

Speaker 33 And then, you know, and then he joked. He's like, okay, I have my butter knife from breakfast.
You know, which is totally like Jeremy.

Speaker 3 Liz sat and prayed as Jeremy kept the phone line open.

Speaker 33 We said, I love you a thousand times over and over and over again, and it just brought so much peace to us.

Speaker 3 Dina says, Tom called her one more time. In a remarkable bit of foresight, he said they were waiting to get over a rural area before they mounted their assault on the hijackers.

Speaker 11 My flight attendant training kicked in, and I just yelled at him.

Speaker 22 And I said, No, no, no.

Speaker 14 Sit down, be still, be quiet, don't draw attention to yourself.

Speaker 5 But that's not him.

Speaker 28 That was not who he was.

Speaker 21 And he yelled back at me and said, if they're going to fly this plane into a building, we're going to do something.

Speaker 3 The fight to take back Flight 93 was about to begin.

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Speaker 3 At 9.57 on the morning of September 11th, chaos enveloped lower Manhattan as the Twin Towers burned, while the third attack at the Pentagon spurred evacuations at the White House and U.S. Capitol.

Speaker 3 It had been barely a half hour since the terrorists had hijacked Flight 93 and redirected the plane toward DC. Now its passengers and crew members were girded for battle.

Speaker 34 They don't know what the destination is, but they know how the story ends, and they decide we're going to change the script.

Speaker 3 In one of the last calls from the plane, flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw called her husband Phil, a pilot himself.

Speaker 16 And she's like, Phil, my flight's just been hijacked by four guys with knives.

Speaker 7 And we're all in the back of the airplane boiling water to throw on them do you have any ideas for me

Speaker 16 and i'm like do what you got to do to get control of that airplane the minutes were ticking by and sandy had no time to spare the last thing she said was phil everybody's running to first class i got to go bye

Speaker 3 and that was it todd beamer had remained on the phone with operator lisa jefferson As they spoke, Jefferson could hear screaming in the background. Beamer asked her to pray with him.

Speaker 30 He wanted me to recite the Lord's Prayer with him, and he did.

Speaker 30 After that,

Speaker 30 he had a sign of his voice. He took a deep breath.
He was still holding the phone, but he was not talking to me. He was talking to someone else.
And he said, you ready? Okay.

Speaker 19 Let's roll.

Speaker 3 Let's roll. Beamer's words would become a rallying cry in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, marking the moment when the team decided to charge the cockpit.

Speaker 34 There's a single aisle on a 757. It's about 20 inches wide.
So they realize that it's going to be a single-file attack.

Speaker 3 We don't know exactly what happened next, but the cockpit voice recorder and its transcript reveal clues.

Speaker 34 So in the last minutes of the flight, we have English-speaking voices and the Arabic voices, including some in Arabic of the hijackers, sort of almost in dialogue.

Speaker 3 Federal investigators permitted families of the passengers and crew to listen to the recording. Linda Gronlin's sister, Elsa, was among them.

Speaker 15 Why was it important for you to listen to that?

Speaker 3 Truth.

Speaker 13 You know, I wanted to hear what she went through during the last moments of her life.

Speaker 21 I knew that it would give me a more clear answer as to what happened after he hung up that phone on the last phone call.

Speaker 3 According to the transcript, at 9.57 a.m., the hijackers talked about a fight taking place with a series of male screams outside the cockpit.

Speaker 3 Tom Burnett's wife, Dina, believes the passengers were attacking and killing one of the hijackers.

Speaker 22 The way he was screaming, you had the idea that his head was being beaten.

Speaker 21 And we often wondered if perhaps it was being beaten with a fire extinguisher, something very, very heavy.

Speaker 3 9.58 a.m., more sounds of struggle, screaming. One passenger yells, in the cockpit.
Dina believes that was her husband.

Speaker 22 On the recording, I heard Tom say,

Speaker 24 in the cockpit, in the cockpit.

Speaker 10 I also heard him at one point say, I'm injured.

Speaker 3 Moments later, another male voice saying, got to get into the cockpit.

Speaker 34 Let's get in there. If we don't, we'll die.

Speaker 3 Then, at 10 a.m., a key moment in the passenger's assault, according to investigators.

Speaker 3 A male passenger's voice can be heard shouting, roll it, as a command, likely referring to the plane's beverage cart. That's followed by loud sounds of plates and glass crashing.

Speaker 3 After listening to the recording, pilot Phil Bradshaw says the cart could have been an effective battering ram.

Speaker 16 You got a couple hundred pounds just pushing it. It would have easily broken through the door.

Speaker 5 This was a determined group of people. Yeah.

Speaker 13 It was an absolutely amazing group of people.

Speaker 3 It's never been certain whether the team finally breached the cockpit, but the hijackers were clearly becoming desperate.

Speaker 16 It's just all chaos. When all that started happening, the hijackers were panicking.

Speaker 3 The terrorist pilot was wildly shifting the direction of the plane.

Speaker 34 He goes up and down. He goes hard left and hard right.
And another pilot in a small private plane sees this happening over the fields of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 15 Okay, what's he doing now, sir?

Speaker 9 It's like he's rocking his wings

Speaker 15 according to my observer.

Speaker 15 Roger.

Speaker 15 Keeps rocking back and forth.

Speaker 3 Finally, at 10.02, one of the hijackers screamed in Arabic, pull it down, pull it down, and began chanting, Allah is the greatest.

Speaker 34 The pilot is effectively given up and he is pointing the nose of the plane down and we know that the passengers are never stopping.

Speaker 5 They fought to the end.

Speaker 21 They fought to the end.

Speaker 24 They went down fighting, no doubt about it.

Speaker 21 And they fought with honor.

Speaker 3 At 10:03, the cockpit recording cuts out. Traveling at about 575 miles an hour, United 93 crashed into that field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 Air Traffic Control Headquarters in Virginia began receiving intel.

Speaker 15 Okay, there is now on that United 93, there is a report of black smoke in the last position I gave you, 15 miles south of Johnstown.

Speaker 3 On a day when America faced the deadliest terrorist attack in its history, 40 ordinary men and women fought back and defeated the hijackers' plan.

Speaker 3 An extraordinary act of heroism that would stun us all. The flight became a legend of sorts, but the story was all too real for the families left behind.

Speaker 3 The news came quickly that terrifying morning. Two jets had crashed into the Twin Towers.
A third had hit the Pentagon.

Speaker 18 Then the towers collapsed. It is a day of catastrophe.

Speaker 3 I was anchoring at MSNBC.

Speaker 3 We're getting more information on that situation. We got word of a fourth plane.

Speaker 18 A large plane crashed just north of the Somerset County airport, 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 After all her calls with her husband Tom, Dina Burnett got the news she dreaded.

Speaker 22 The phone dropped, and I just remember feeling as though I was never going to be able to move again.

Speaker 3 She gathered strength later in the evening to tell her three young daughters.

Speaker 5 It doesn't get any tougher, does it?

Speaker 22 It does not get tougher than that.

Speaker 14 Than to look into the face of a child and let them know that their parent is dead.

Speaker 5 Do either of you have a sense that he may walk in the door again?

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 12 I had no idea what death was.

Speaker 12 My mom has always said that I, in particular, always would be like, oh, is he coming back from his trip? Is he going to come home next week?

Speaker 3 Cece Lyle's sons, Jerome and Javon, say after that day, they were never the same.

Speaker 5 Did either of you experience moments of anger?

Speaker 8 Right now.

Speaker 7 Right now?

Speaker 5 Right now in this moment. Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, let it out.

Speaker 34 Oh, man.

Speaker 34 Almost every day thinking about it.

Speaker 5 And then you got to think about the fact that

Speaker 34 God will never give you nothing you can't handle.

Speaker 34 And our mom was super strong.

Speaker 3 And it turned out they discovered something a few days after the crash. During the flight, their mom had left a final message on their answering machine for the boys and their stepfather.

Speaker 3 I want to tell you I love you.

Speaker 45 Please tell my children that I love them very much.

Speaker 45 And I'm so sorry, babe.

Speaker 45 I don't know what to say.

Speaker 9 I hope to be able to see your face again, baby. I love you.
Bye.

Speaker 5 I can imagine a message like that as a blessing and a curse. Right.
But yet, something that you want to cherish. And to hold on to.

Speaker 7 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 For many of the families, their grief has never really gone away.

Speaker 3 Phil Bradshaw says the moment when he lost his wife feels like it just happened yesterday.

Speaker 16 You drop to your knees and you cry like a baby, because that's what I did.

Speaker 16 You know, it's...

Speaker 16 It's bad losing someone, but to lose them suddenly, it's even worse.

Speaker 16 Not a day goes by I don't think about Sandy.

Speaker 16 The day is imprinted in my head.

Speaker 3 For Jack Grencolas, that day meant facing the loss of his wife, Lauren, and their unborn child.

Speaker 5 Everybody deals with grief in their own way. It sounds like it took you down a really deep and dark hole.

Speaker 3 It did.

Speaker 17 I remember looking in that deep abyss and saying, this is not the way I want to go.

Speaker 7 But more importantly, it wouldn't be the way Lauren would want me to live on.

Speaker 17 And that was what saved me. I can just hear her spirit, and her spirit kept me going.

Speaker 3 And it's the spirit of United 93 that spurs the families on to commemorate this 20th anniversary.

Speaker 5 Well, I think of Jodi's age and her generation, there's a good chance that a lot of her peers have vague or no recollection of 9-11.

Speaker 3 Is that concerning to you?

Speaker 13 Well, it's important to keep the legacies of these people alive.

Speaker 19 All these souls that were lost on that day.

Speaker 3 Nearly 3,000 people died on 9-11. That number might have been even higher if the passengers and crew on Flight 93 hadn't been willing to sacrifice their own lives.

Speaker 3 Investigators believe their selfless act prevented the terrorists from reaching a fourth target, either the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

Speaker 34 Flight 93 symbolized the human spirit rising up against terror. rising up and saying, we're not going to sit idly by while you take our lives and the lives of others.

Speaker 13 I think that they're all heroes, every single one of them.

Speaker 3 Over the summer, we brought some of the children of Flight 93 together. The Green family, the Burnetts, and the sons of Cece Lyles.
Many of them had never met before.

Speaker 3 You could tell they shared a special bond and a sense of mission as the next generation.

Speaker 23 I'm on the board of the Friends of Flight 93.

Speaker 23 It is an organization that is working towards that mission of making sure that on the 30th anniversary or the 37th anniversary, people are still talking about Flight 93 with that narrative of 9-11.

Speaker 5 Jerome, do you feel a responsibility to talk about it, just to share the story?

Speaker 34 Yes, I do.

Speaker 5 It is our duty, it is our job to keep this legacy, to keep our story, to remember those people that gave their lives heroically.

Speaker 5 Anna Claire, what do you think we should be holding on to as we move forward?

Speaker 12 Unity and just trying to live our lives in their legacy.

Speaker 26 The other message is one of resilience. knowing that resilience is a muscle.
So much of what happened on that day, I think over the years we've been able to reflect on as being an immense tragedy.

Speaker 26 But on the 20th anniversary, there's something, and maybe it's just sitting on this couch with you all that maybe feels a little bit different.

Speaker 34 I agree.

Speaker 39 Yeah, I mean, when I think about 9-11 in Flight 93 in particular, I think about a day of immense darkness.

Speaker 39 I think about the great hope and bravery that was demonstrated by the passengers of Flight 93.

Speaker 39 And that in the midst of darkness, there's still light pouring in.

Speaker 6 Many of the children plan to be in Shanksville tomorrow to observe the 20th anniversary with their families. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
I'm Lester Holt. for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 6 Good night.

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