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]
9:37 a.m.-10:03 a.m. September 11, 2001: Some Flight 93 Passengers and Crew Able to Remain Calm Despite Hijacking
In phone calls made from Flight 93, some passengers and crew members sound as if they are able to keep surprisingly calm, despite the crisis: 
Passenger Jeremy Glick calls his wife, Lyz, at 9:37. She later recalls, “He was so calm, the plane sounded so calm, that if I hadn’t seen what was going on on the TV, I wouldn’t have believed it.” She says, “I was surprised by how calm it seemed in the background. I didn’t hear any screaming. I didn’t hear any noises. I didn’t hear any commotion.” [Bergen Record, 10/5/2001; MSNBC, 9/11/2006] Passenger Lauren Grandcolas calls her husband, Jack, at 9:39, and leaves a message on the answering machine. According to journalist and author Jere Longman, “It sounded to Jack as if she were driving home from the grocery store or ordering a pizza.” Jack Grandcolas later says, “She sounded calm.” He describes, “There is absolutely no background noise on her message. You can’t hear people screaming or yelling or crying. It’s very calm, the whole cabin, the background, there’s really very little sound.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 128; Kate Solomon, 2006; Washington Post, 4/26/2006] Passenger Mark Bingham speaks on the phone with his mother and aunt, reportedly from around 9:42. His aunt finds him sounding “calm, matter-of-fact.” His mother later recalls, “His voice was calm. He seemed very much composed, even though I know he must have been under terrible duress.” She also says the background discussion between passengers, about taking back the plane, sounds like a “calm boardroom meeting.” [CNN, 9/12/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 129-130; CNN, 4/21/2006] Passenger Todd Beamer speaks with GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson for 13 minutes, starting at 9:45. Jefferson later says that Beamer “stayed calm through the entire conversation. He made me doubt the severity of the call.” She tells Beamer’s wife, “If I hadn’t known it was a real hijacking, I’d have thought it was a crank call, because Todd was so rational and methodical about what he was doing.” [Beamer and Abraham, 2002, pp. 211; Beliefnet (.com), 2006] Passenger Honor Elizabeth Wainio speaks with her stepmother, Esther Heymann, from around 9:54. Heymann later tells CNN that Wainio “really was remarkably calm throughout our whole conversation.” (However, according to Jere Longman, although she speaks calmly, Wainio’s breathing is “shallow, as if she were hyperventilating.”) When her stepdaughter is not talking, Heymann reportedly cannot “hear another person. She could not hear any conversation or crying or yelling or whimpering. Nothing.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 168 and 171-172; CNN, 2/18/2006] Flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw calls her husband at 9:50. He later says, “She sounded calm, but like her adrenaline was really going.” [US News and World Report, 10/21/2001] At 9:58, flight attendant CeeCee Lyles phones her husband. He later says, “She was surprisingly calm,” considering the screaming he heard in the background. Her relatives attribute her calmness to her police training (she is a former police officer). [Lyles, 9/11/2001; Dallas Morning News, 9/17/2001; Investor’s Business Daily, 4/18/2002]
Longman later writes, “I heard tapes of a couple of the phone calls made from [Flight 93] and was struck by the absence of panic in the voices.” [Longman, 2002, pp. xi]
9:54 a.m. September 11, 2001: Passenger Elizabeth Wainio Calls Stepmother from Flight 93
Honor Elizabeth Wainio, a 27-year-old passenger on board Flight 93, calls her stepmother Esther Heymann, who is in Cantonsville, Maryland. [Chicago Tribune, 9/30/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] According to journalist and author Jere Longman, the call starts “shortly past nine-fifty.” Official accounts say it starts at 9:54, or seconds before. [Longman, 2002, pp. 167; 9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 44; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] Wainio begins, “We’re being hijacked. I’m calling to say good-bye.” She says a “really nice person” next to her has handed her the phone and told her to call her family. News reports suggest this person is Lauren Grandcolas, who had been assigned a seat by Wainio in row 11 of the plane. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 167-168; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; MSNBC, 9/11/2006] But according to a summary of passenger phone calls presented at the 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui trial, Wainio and Grandcolas are now separated and sitting in different areas of the plane. Wainio is now in row 33 along with fellow passenger Marion Britton and an unnamed flight attendant. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] According to some reports, Wainio is using a cell phone. Newsweek states that she actually tells her stepmother she is using a cell phone loaned to her by another passenger. [Newsweek, 9/22/2001; Chicago Tribune, 9/30/2001] But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claims she uses an Airfone. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] According to Longman, there are “long silences” throughout the call. [MSNBC, 7/30/2002] Heymann cannot hear anyone in the background: “She could not hear any conversation or crying or yelling or whimpering. Nothing.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 172] Longman describes that Heymann gets the feeling her stepdaughter is “resigned to what was going to happen to her. And that she actually seemed to be leaving her body, going to a better place. She had had two grandmothers who were deceased, and at one point she told her [step]mother, ‘They’re waiting for me.’” [MSNBC, 7/30/2002] Wainio also talks about her family, and says she is worried about how her brother and sister will handle this terrible news. [Longman, 2002, pp. 168] Accounts conflict over how long her call lasts and when it ends (see (Between 9:58 a.m. and 10:05 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
10:00 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 93’s Autopilot Turned Off; Alarms Sound
Based on information from the plane’s flight data recorder, the National Transportation Safety Board will later determine that Flight 93’s autopilot is turned off at “about 10:00,” and remains off for the flight’s final minutes. [National Transportation Safety Board, 2/13/2002 
] Phil Bradshaw, whose wife is an attendant on Flight 93, will later hear the plane’s cockpit voice recording. Being a pilot himself, he recognizes on it the sound of the alarm that goes off when the autopilot is disconnected. [News and Record (Piedmont Triad, NC), 9/11/2002] CNN’s Kelli Arena will hear the recording during the 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui trial and will report that, shortly after this alarm sounds, “Another alarm goes off.” [CNN, 4/12/2006] According to journalist and author Jere Longman, as well as the alarm set off when the autopilot was disconnected, another alarm “would have sounded because the plane was traveling at five hundred seventy-five miles an hour in the final minutes, far exceeding the design limits of four hundred twenty-five miles an hour below twenty thousand feet and two hundred eighty-seven miles an hour below ten thousand feet.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 208] So presumably this is the second alarm described by Arena.
March 27, 2002: Cockpit Recordings Raise Doubts about Flight 93 Events
New York Times reporter Jere Longman writes an article based on recent leaks to him about Flight 93’s cockpit flight recording. (Later, relatives of the victims are given a single chance to listen to the recording). He claims that earlier reports of a 9-1-1 call from a bathroom reporting smoke and an explosion are incorrect. He names the passenger-caller as Edward Felt and notes that the dispatcher who took the call and Felt’s wife both deny the smoke and explosion story. There were messages from both passengers and hijackers on the plane speaking of a bomb. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] Longman also claims that one passenger, Tom Burnett, told his wife there were guns on the plane. [New York Times, 3/27/2002] Previously, it had been widely reported that Tom Burnett told his wife he did not see any guns. [MSNBC, 9/14/2001] Note that the passengers appeared doubtful that the hijackers had either real guns or bombs, but there is a March 2002 report of a gun being used on Flight 11.
April 18, 2002: Private Showing of Flight 93 Recordings Fails to Quell Confusions
The FBI allows relatives of passengers on Flight 93 to listen to the 31-minutes of tape from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and see a written transcript of the recording. About 70 relatives do so. They are allowed to take notes, but not to make recordings because the tape might be used in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Guardian, 4/19/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] The San Francisco Chronicle responds: “Is there even a dollop of logic in that explanation? It’s like saying we can’t watch video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center because that video might be used in a trial.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 6/3/2002] Much of the tape is reportedly unintelligible. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “the voices were muddled and the ambient noise of the wind rushing by the speeding plane often made it impossible to distinguish individuals, even when they were yelling.” [Daily Telegraph, 4/20/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] New York Times reporter Jere Longman writes the book Among The Heroes based in part on interviews with relatives who hear the cockpit voice recording, along with several government officials and investigators. The recording reveals new details of the passengers’ struggle on board Flight 93, but the government still has not officially stated if it believes they took over the plane or not. [Washington Post, 4/19/2002; MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 7/31/2002]
