April 13, 2006
The heroes of Flight 93
With rapt attention, we watched the Discovery Channel special, 
"The Flight That Fought Back," last September.
"If you'd be on that plane ...," Lamont said, speculating on my famous temper.
"... it would have crashed in Cleveland," I finished his thought.
After a moment, I continued. "No way I would have waited until Pennsylvania and plotted with others," pantomiming grabbing my ever-present Swiss Army knife (Flight 93, obviously, was pre-airport screening) and bum-rushing the hijackers reflexively, as soon as they made themselves known.
"RAARRRRRRRRRR!" Yes, women, at least some of us, fantasize about being heroes or warriors, giving a battle yell and charging the bullies. If you're going to go down, take your enemies with you, right?
That sentiment still stands. But in reality, the fearful details of the flight, revealed yesterday, would have scared the breath out of me. Thus the courage of the passengers becomes even more apparent.
Most of the details in the A+E re-enactment were born out by the playing of the cockpit tape yesterday at the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui.
What comes from the tapes is a better sense of the heroism of the passengers. Having courage required:
- dealing with the impending doom of an airplane heading for a crash, which must be utter Hell.
- knowing that other human beings (bringing a new wrinkle to cruelty), and not mechanical failure, doomed them.
- and knowing that they had little hope for themselves -- two of their number lay with their throats slit -- but could at best only avoid further deaths on the ground.
How did they act with such surety, in a situation far past that of Hell, subjecting them to some unfathomable level of fear and pure terror?
Somehow the passengers deliberated, got information from friends on the ground watching the World Trade Center burn, planned, made final calls home, acted and succeeded -- as maniacs in the cockpit screamed "Allah is great" nine times and turned the plane upside down.
The thought that any human could imagine that the use of an airplane for homicide honors the greatness of Allah is beyond chilling.
It's interesting to note Moussaoui's nonchalance in these two accounts below. Zacharias, you are moving into John Wayne Gacy territory with your casual attitude toward exterminating others, but maybe that's exactly how you can manage to be so evil.
Striking details from yesterday's court trial in Alexandria, Va. (from the New York Times, Final Struggles on 9/11 Plane Fill Courtroom, by Neil A. Lewis):
- There are also the sounds of what may have been the killing of a flight attendant as the hijackers took control: a woman in the cockpit moaning, "Please, please, don't hurt me." Her voice soon appears again for the last time as she is heard to say, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die" followed by one of the hijackers saying in Arabic: "Everything is fine. I finished."
- Mr. Moussaoui has mostly evinced an air of indifference during the trial.
- Violence in the cabin had told the passengers that something was different than an ordinary hijacking. In evidence presented Tuesday, jurors heard the phone call of Marion Britton, a passenger, to a friend on the ground. "Don't worry," the friend consoled. "They'll probably take you to another country."
Ms. Britton replied, "Two passengers have had their throats cut."
From the Washington Post, At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality:
- It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe clenched fists. The sounds were muffled but unmistakable, one body blow after another, ending with a squishy thud.
"No, no, no, no, no. No," came the high-pitched voice of a crew member or flight attendant being subdued. " . . . Please, please don't hurt me," the person said later. " . . . I don't want to die."
- A foreign-accented voice, increasingly agitated, screamed: "Down. Down. Down!" as the whacking sound continued. Then there was silence. "That's it. Go back," a hijacker said calmly. "Everything is fine. I finished."
- "Let's get them!" one passenger yelled as dishes crashed to the floor. "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die," screamed another amid more thumping and crashing and breaking of glass.
- In the end, as the passengers were either in the cockpit or moments from entering it, the hijackers turned the plane upside down -- and crashed it.
"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed nine times as the plane went down. The recording then went dead. The courtroom was silent.
More than 35 survivors and family members testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, including Lorne Lyles, whose wife, CeeCee, was a flight attendant on Flight 93 (see photo of family, right). He brought several jurors to the brink of tears with his testimony yesterday about his wife's two calls from the plane.
The first time the phone rang, Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., police officer who had worked the overnight shift, rolled over and went back to sleep. He did speak to his wife briefly when she called again. But only a week later did he hear the message she had left on his voice mail.
"Hi, baby," CeeCee Lyles said in the call, a tape of which was played in court yesterday. "Baby, you have to listen to me very carefully. I'm on a plane that's been hijacked. . . . I'm trying to be calm."
Saying she knew that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, Lyles tried to keep her composure, but her voice broke as she ended the call. "I hope to be able to see your face again, baby," she said. "I love you, baby."
Lyles said he has been in and out of counseling for the past five years. "I'm just now being able to appreciate a full night's sleep," he testified. "They say closure, but there's never any closure. It takes a piece of you."
- Moussaoui looked bored, as he did when the cockpit voice recorder was played. Jurors leaned forward in their seats.
- Passengers, who had made cellphone calls and learned of the earlier trade center attack, then rushed the cockpit. "They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside," a hijacker said.
"Shall we finish it off?" one hijacker asked.
"No, not yet," responded another. "When they all come, we finish it off."
Within seconds, there was bedlam -- the sounds of a violent, almost animalistic struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 commissioners say was probably the passengers hurling objects at the cockpit door or ramming it with a beverage cart.
"Down, down. Pull it down, pull it down," a hijacker said just before his colleague praised Allah and crashed the plane.
In the background, a single voice could be heard screaming "No!"
Zacharias, what goes on in that mind of you and your friends, to do what you did to CeeCee Lyles and 39 others?
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