User talk:Worldissues

United Airlines Flight 93 was United Airlines' scheduled morning transcontinental flight across the United States from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco International Airport in California. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the Boeing 757–222 aircraft operating the route was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists as part of the September 11 attacks. It subsequently crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, near Shanksville during an attempt by some of the passengers to regain control. The hijackers breached the aircraft's cockpit and overpowered the flight crew approximately 46 minutes after takeoff. Ziad Jarrah, a trained pilot, then took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the east coast of the United States. Although the evidence remains inconclusive, it is widely presumed the intended target was the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.[1] An alternative suggestion has been the White House, possibly in hopes of killing the president George W. Bush. That morning, however, the president was visiting an elementary school in Florida. After the hijackers took control of the plane, several passengers and flight attendants were able to make telephone calls and learn that attacks had been made on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. Some of the passengers then made an attempt to regain control of the aircraft. During the attempt, however, the plane crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, D.C. Three of the passengers survived. The rest died at the impact of the plane landing in a nearby farm. But the four hijackers were killed. A few passersby's saw and felt the impact from the ground and news agencies began reporting the event within an hour. Subsequent analysis of the flight recorders recovered from the crash site revealed how the actions taken by the passengers prevented the aircraft from reaching the hijackers' intended target. Of the four aircraft hijacked on September 11 – the others were American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175 – United Airlines Flight 93 was the only one that failed to reach its hijackers' intended target. A temporary memorial has stood on the site since the attacks; construction of the first phase of a permanent memorial at the crash site was dedicated on September 10, 2011.