9:27 a.m.-10:03 a.m. September 11, 2001: Passengers See Only Three Hijackers on Flight 93

According to journalist and author Jere Longman, “On all phone calls made from [Flight 93], passengers reported seeing only three hijackers. Not a single caller reported four hijackers.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 120] (As an exception, one article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claims that passenger Todd Beamer describes four hijackers; however, other reports say he describes only three (see 9:45 a.m.-9:58 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] ) Yet the official claim is that there are four hijackers on this plane. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/27/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 4] Some family members of the passengers and crew will later be suspicious that one of the hijackers was in the plane’s cockpit from takeoff (see 9:16 a.m. September 11, 2001). However, according to Longman, “Investigators, pilots, flight attendants and United officials tended to discount this theory.… Paperwork would have to be filled out in advance if an observer requested to sit in the cockpit. No request was made for Flight 93, United officials later reported.… Flight 93 was hijacked approximately forty-five minutes after it left Newark. Other pilots agreed that Captain Dahl likely would have requested that any observer return to his regular seat by that time.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 120] The 9/11 Commission’s explanation for the reports of three hijackers instead of four is that Ziad Jarrah, “the crucial pilot-trained member of [the hijacker’s] team, remained seated and inconspicuous until after the cockpit was seized; and once inside, he would not have been visible to the passengers.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 12]