Source:
MSNBC.com
http://www.msnbc.com/news/default_asp.htm

Cell calls from planes reveal horror
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627214_asp.htm

Sept. 12 — The passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark,
N.J., knew they were going to die. Already at least one passenger had been
killed by the knife-wielding terrorists who had hijacked the plane. But
some decided they were going to go down fighting — a decision that may have
resulted in the plane crashing in rural western Pennsylvania, perhaps
saving a national landmark and untold lives on the ground.

THE FLIGHT DEPARTED for San Francisco at 8:01 a.m. ET with 38 passengers,
two pilots and five flight attendants. It is not known exactly when or how
the terrorists seized control of the airplane, or how many terrorists there
were.

On at least one other plane hijacked in Tuesday’s coordinated attack on the
Pentagon and World Trade Center, terrorists used knives made of razors
embedded in plastic handles to kill flight attendants, then lured the
pilots out of the cockpit to seize control, according to a report by the
Boston Herald.

On that flight, the terrorists had brought the makeshift knives on board in
their shaving bags and other carry-ons.
Wielding those weapons, the terrorists pulled stewardesses to the back of
one of the planes that departed Boston’s Logan Airport and began killing
them. But the stewardesses were not their real target — they used the
murders to lure the pilots out of the cockpit so they could seize control
of the jet.

They started killing stewardesses in the back of the plane as a
diversion. The pilot came back to help, and that is how they got into the
cockpit,” an anonymous source told The Herald. The source could not
specify whether those events took place on the American Airlines flight
that left Boston’s Logan airport, or the United Airlines flight. Both
planes flew into the World Trade Center roughly an hour after they departed
Boston.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the hijackers used knives to
subdue the crew of American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike
the World Trade Center. He said there were three to six hijackers on each
plane.

On United Flight 93, at least one flight attendant called home to say goodbye.

CeeCee Lyles called her husband at home in Fort Myers, Fla., on her cell
phone. There were screams in the background. She sobbed as she told him
she loved him and their children.

'WE’VE BEEN HIJACKED'

She called him and let him know how much she loved him and the boys,” her
aunt, Mareya Schneider, said.
“We’ve been hijacked,” Lyles told her husband. Then, the phone went dead.

Alice Hoglan told KTVU-TV in San Francisco that her son, Mark Bingham, 31,
called her from aboard the flight at 9:44 EST.
"We’ve been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb,”
Hoglan quoted her son as saying.

It was not known for certain where the terrorists wanted to take the
plane. Some news reports have speculated that the plane may have been
heading for Camp David, Md., the presidential retreat.

A FIGHT TO THE END

From the back of the plane, Thomas Burnett, a businessman from San Ramon,
Calif., called his wife, Deena. The flight was doomed he said. They were
going to die. One passenger had already been stabbed to death.
Burnett couldn’t just sit and let it happen.

"I know we’re all going to die — there’s three of us who are going to do
something about it,” the family’s priest quoted Burnett as saying.

The Rev. Frank Colacicco told the San Francisco Chronicle that Burnett
then told his wife, “I love you, honey."

According to the Washington Post, Jeremy Glick, 31, placed a similar call
to his wife, Lyzbeth. Glick told her that the terrorists — three men
wearing red headbands and carrying a red box they said contained a bomb —
had forced the crew into the back of the plane and taken over the cockpit,
his brother-in-law Douglas B. Hurwitt told the paper.

After several minutes of explaining what was happening, Glick said he and
several other passengers were going to try to do something.

"He knew that stopping them was going to end all of their lives. But that
was my brother-in-law. He was a take-charge guy," Hurwitt told the Post.

Glick told his wife that he knew he was going to die, and that she should
have a good life and take care of their
3-month-old child.

Did Burnett, Glick and other passengers know what had happened at the World
Trade Center or the Pentagon?
Had something said in the cockpit spurred the decision to fight back? Did
they know where the plane was headed?

Details of what the passengers did next are not known, nor is it known
whether their actions were successful.

At 10 a.m., the plane suddenly went down, crashing into rural western
Pennsylvania, where it created a crater 30 feet across and 20 feet deep,
and scattered debris for half a mile.

Whatever target was intended for destruction was spared, and with it untold
lives.

‘WE HAVE OTHER PLANES’

On other flights, passengers made phone calls saying the hijackers had
subdued their crews with knives and other sharp instruments.

Air-traffic controllers actually heard hijackers instructing the pilots in
English from inside the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 11, the
Christian Science Monitor reported, quoting a flight controller in Nashua,
N.H., handling the flight.

One of the pilots keyed their mike so the conversation between the pilot
and the person in the cockpit could be heard,” an unidentified controller
told the Christian Science Monitor. “The person in the cockpit was
speaking English.
He was saying something like, "Don’t do anything foolish. You’re not going
to get hurt." The controller also heard someone in the cockpit telling the
pilot, “We have more planes, we have other planes.” That flight,
originating in Boston and bound for Los Angeles, carried 92 passengers.

All four hijacked planes were headed to California on Tuesday morning. Two
crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon near
Washington, D.C., and one in Pennsylvania. The four planes carried 266
people.

‘CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS’

On board the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, former federal
prosecutor and conservative political commentator Barbara Olson called her
husband, U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, on a cell phone twice. She said
the plane had been hijacked by attackers using knives and sharp
instruments. She also said armed hijackers had forced passengers to the
rear of the jet.

"Can you believe this ... we are being hijacked,” a friend quoted her as
saying. Then, the phone went dead.
American Airlines Flight 77, bound from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles
with 64 passengers and crew, flew low to the ground and then crashed into
the Pentagon going 600 mph and loaded with 30,000 pounds of fuel.

In another report from a Connecticut TV station, one passenger aboard the
second plane that hit the World Trade Center was able to use a phone on the
aircraft to report that terrorists had taken over the plane and stabbed one
of the flight attendants. United Airlines Flight 175 was bound from Boston
to Los Angeles with 65 people on board.

News12 in Easton, Conn., said a resident there received the phone call from
the passenger. The report could not be independently confirmed.

MSNBC’s Elliot Zaret and Bobbi Nodell, as well as The Associated Press and
Reuters, contributed to this report.