Posted on: Friday, July 23, 2004

Passengers never got to cockpit

By Ted Bridis
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers, but never actually made it into the cockpit, the Sept. 11 commission concluded.

The assertion, included in the panel's dramatic summary of the harrowing flight, contradicts the firmly held belief by some victims' families that passengers breached the cockpit and fought with hijackers during their final moments.

In phone calls from the plane, four passengers said they and others planned to fight the hijackers after learning of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York earlier that morning.

With the words "Let's roll," passengers rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers.

Relying on the cockpit recorder and flight data, the commission said terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah violently rocked the jet's wings and told another hijacker to block the door. With the sounds of fighting outside the cockpit, Jarrah asked, "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?"

Another hijacker, not identified, replied, "No, not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."

Jarrah began pitching the nose of the plane up and down to throw passengers off balance.

Seconds later, a passenger who wasn't identified yelled, "In the cockpit! If we don't, we die!" And 16 seconds afterward, another passenger yelled, "Roll it!" Investigators previously have said they believe passengers tried to use a food cart to break the cockpit door.

Jarrah said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!" and asked his fellow hijacker, "Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?"

The other hijacker answered, "Yes, put it in and pull it down."

Roughly 90 seconds later, the jet rolled onto its back and crashed into a Pennsylvania field at more than 580 mph, killing everyone aboard.

The commission concluded that the hijackers remained at the controls of the plane, "but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."

The commission said the hijackers' destination was Washington. It praised the courage of the passengers and said their struggle "saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved either the Capitol or the White House from destruction."

For relatives of those on board Flight 93, the last of the four planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, the commission's report and recommendations brought some relief, but little closure.

"The report is a good thing," said Jerry Bingham of Wildwood, Fla., whose son Mark Bingham died on the flight. "But it's only good if they utilize it."

Bingham stood at Mr. Bill's International, a Florida shop where he was having T-shirts and baseball caps made in honor of his strapping son and the other victims of Flight 93. He said he expected the report would merely lead to political infighting.

"Mark my words," he said. "They'll start bickering over this whole thing. Two years from now they'll still be asking, 'Who's in charge of all this?"'

The Orlando Sentinel contributed to this report.