Drama of struggle on Flight 93 detailed

LEESBURG, Fla. – At 9:57, a passenger blurted out one final message on her cell phone.

“Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

The passengers on Flight 93 stormed up the narrow aisle. There weren’t many of them, only 33, but the passengers and crew included some impressive fighters: a flight attendant who’d worked for six years as a police officer and a 6-foot-5-inch public-relations executive.

At the front of the plane, the passengers struggled with the hijackers. Inside the cockpit, Ziad Jarrah, the hijacker piloting the plane, began to roll the airplane to the left and right, trying to knock the passengers off their feet. Yet the passengers refused to give up. Desperate to settle the revolt, the pilot began pitching the plane’s nose up and down. The shouts and screams continued outside the cockpit door.

The 9-11 Commission’s final report may be tossed around like a political football, but it also contains the most complete account of what happened on Flight 93 – and the people who fought the hijackers to their deaths.

For relatives of those onboard 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 strapping son Mark Bingham died on the flight that crashed into a Pennsylvania field. “But it’s only good if they utilize it.”

Bingham, like many victims’ families, had read only a summary of the final report. But deep within the document is a dramatic summary of the harrowing flight. Most families heard some of those details in 2002, when FBI officials played tapes of the plane’s cockpit voice recorder for the grieving families.

Meanwhile, the family of another possible hero, flight attendant CeeCee Ross Lyles, spent Thursday trying to absorb the commission’s report. Lyles had worked for the Fort Pierce, Fla., police department for six years before joining United Airlines and had advanced police training on how to fight attackers.

After the plane crashed, her family and friends remained convinced that Lyles, 33, had helped the passengers take on the hijackers.

In Fort Pierce, far from the halls of the Capitol, Lyles’ mother has followed the 9-11 hearings. Unlike some victims’ families, Carrie Ross isn’t searching for a scapegoat.

“Being a mom, I want to blame somebody,” Ross said. “I just don’t know who to blame.”

The commission’s final report, however, couldn’t dull the pain of the image Ross had seen on news broadcasts just days earlier. Captured on videotape were several 9-11 hijackers walking through security screenings at Dulles International Airport after three of them set off a metal detector.

“When I watch the TV news and I see that these people came right through the line and were not stopped, all I could think of was when she had to look into their faces,” Ross said. “Somehow, something’s wrong with that picture.”

The picture of what happened on Flight 93, however, is becoming clearer. The cockpit recorder captured much of the action, and the report details the action, minute by minute.

Amid the sound of loud thumps, crashes, shouts and breaking glasses and plates, Jarrah asked another hijacker, “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” The other hijacker replied: “No, not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”

Jarrah pitched the plane up and down again. A passenger yelled “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.” Sixteen seconds later, a passenger yelled “Roll it.”

The passengers never made it into the cockpit. Jarrah stopped the violent maneuver and began saying, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!” He asked his fellow hijacker again. “Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?”

“Yes, put it in and pull it down,” the hijacker answered.

The passengers never gave up. As the airplane headed down, and the plane rolled onto its back, one of the hijackers began to shout, “Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.”

In the background, as the plane plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pa., the passengers can be heard continuing to attack.

The report concluded that Jarrah’s objective was to crash the plane into the White House or the U.S. Capitol. “He was defeated,” the commission concluded, “by the alerted, unarmed passengers of United 93.”

For Jerry Bingham, the broader message of the report is clear: The nation needs to maintain its resolve against terrorism.

“My son and the others on Flight 93 fought back,” he said. “We need to continue that fight.”