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Tales tell of flights' chaos, heroism
©Washington Post, Todd Beamer told the GTE Airfone operator he knew he was going to die, asked her to pray with him and uttered his last, defiant words. "Are you guys ready?" the operator heard the 32-year-old Beamer ask fellow passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh Tuesday. Then he said: "Let's roll." The operator, Lisa D. Jefferson, heard screams and a scuffle before the line went dead, according to Beamer's wife, Lisa, who heard the account from Jefferson. Lisa Beamer said Jefferson told her she was on the line in Chicago with Todd Beamer for the final 15 minutes of the flight, which was headed from Newark to San Francisco and crashed just after 10 a.m. The phone call, first reported Sunday by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, offers the most detailed evidence yet of the passenger revolt aboard Flight 93 that might have caused the plane to crash short of its intended target -- believed to be Washington. In other phone calls, two passengers told people on the ground they were planning to try to overpower the hijackers. New details also emerged Sunday about the final moments of the two hijacked airliners that slammed into the World Trade Center. United Flight 175, a Boeing 767 headed from Boston to Los Angeles, was on a collision course with at least two other airliners after it veered off course and descended toward Manhattan. In one case, the hijacker controlling the plane appeared to maneuver to avoid a midair collision, according to government sources. Another aircraft descended rapidly after being warned of an imminent collision with a hijacked plane by the on-board collision warning system. As it flew toward Manhattan, United 175 turned to the left and began descending. One controller reported to investigators that he realized the plane had turned head-on toward a Delta aircraft. The Delta plane began a turn, but the other aircraft also turned, and their radar targets merged on the screen, sources said. However, the hijacked plane leveled off for a moment, perhaps to avoid the Delta aircraft, then began its descent again. Shortly after that, the hijacked plane was headed straight for a US Airways flight. The USAirways plane's collision-avoidance system detected the approaching plane and advised the USAirways pilot to descend, which he did, avoiding a collision. Controllers scrambled to direct other planes out of the way of both United 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 -- which also originated in Boston -- as they headed toward the twin towers. Lisa Beamer said her husband called Jefferson on a GTE Airfone at 9:45 a.m., after the passengers aboard his flight had already learned that Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center. By that time, the hijackers aboard Flight 93 had stabbed one passenger to death. The United pilots, Jason Dahl and Leroy Homer, had also been injured, Beamer told Jefferson, though he did not say how seriously. The remaining passengers and crew were broken up into two groups; some were herded together in the first-class compartment, but most were told to sit on the floor in a galley at the rear of the 757-200's 110-foot cabin, Beamer told Jefferson. Beamer said that he and a group of men in the rear of the plane planned to "jump on" one of the hijackers who was standing guard over them, with what he said was a bomb attached to his waist. "We're going to do something," Beamer, a father of two from Cranbury, N.J., told Jefferson. "I know I'm not going to get out of this." He asked Jefferson to recite the Lord's Prayer with him and she did, Lisa Beamer said. Beamer then said, "Let's roll," and Jefferson could hear chaos in the cabin until, minutes later, the line went dead. It was the hijackers' bad luck that they chose a plane with a number of large men on board. Beamer stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 200 pounds. Jeremy Glick, 31, another passenger involved in the apparent revolt, was a college rugby player and judo champion. Mark Bingham, 31, of San Francisco was a 6-4 rugby player. United Airlines has told the family of passenger Lou Nacke, 42, a 5-9, 200-pound executive who wears a "Superman" tattoo on his left shoulder, that Nacke is believed to have been involved in the plan, according to Robert Weisberg, Nacke's father-in-law. Even if they overpowered the hijacker standing guard over them, the men in the back of the aircraft would have had to run-single file, down a narrow aisle about 35 yards to the cockpit. Both Beamer and Glick spoke of three hijackers in their phone calls, but the FBI has identified four, two of whom were apparently in the cockpit. This suggests the passengers might not have been able to see a fourth hijacker. Todd Beamer also asked Jefferson to relay a message to his wife and two sons, David, 3, and Drew, 1. "Tell her I love her and the boys," he told Jefferson. Lisa Beamer, 32, said she is expecting another child in January. The air traffic controllers on duty Tuesday morning in Boston, New York, Cleveland and Washington who watched the four doomed airliners on radar screens have told their stories to investigators. Sources say these debriefings show the terrorists knew their commandeered aircraft well enough to use several electronic means to confuse controllers. Gradually, controllers sorted out what was happening, but to their horror, they could do nothing but watch. The FAA's Boston and New York "en route centers" -- where controllers guide planes through upper-altitude airspace and vast areas of lower airspace where there are no major airports -- saw almost all the action involving the two World Trade Center planes. The first real sign that something might be wrong apparently came when the Boston center gave American Flight 11 permission to climb, but received no answer. There was no further radio contact with the plane. Controllers at both the Boston and New York centers were confused at first, but a New York controller announced out loud: "I believe I might be working a hijack." According to sources, one of the first radio utterances from an open microphone on one of the two craft was, "Get out of here. Get out of here." Controllers lost track of American Flight 11 as it flew at 29,000 feet. Later, it was determined the pilot had probably turned off the plane's transponder, which sends controllers the plane's identity, flight number, altitude and speed.
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