Todd Beamer - Flight 93

Flight 93

After United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked, Beamer and other passengers communicated with people on the ground via airphones and cell phones, and learned that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked using hijacked airplanes.

Beamer tried to place a credit card call through a phone located on the back of a plane seat but was routed to a customer-service representative instead, who passed him on to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Beamer reported that one passenger was killed and, later, that a flight attendant had told him the pilot and co-pilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded. He was also on the phone when the plane made its turn in a southeasterly direction, a move that had him briefly panicking. According to accounts of cell phone conversations, Beamer, along with Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick formed a plan to take the plane back from the hijackers, and led other passengers in this effort. Later, he told the operator that some of the plane's passengers were planning to "jump on" the hijackers and fly the plane into the ground before the hijackers' plan could be followed through. Beamer also recited 23rd Psalm with Jefferson. According to Jefferson, Beamer's last audible words were "Are you guys ready? Okay, let's roll."

Read more about this topic:  Todd Beamer

Famous quotes containing the word flight:

    Sure smokers have made personal choices. And they pay for those choices every day, whether sitting through an airline flight dying for a smoke, or dying for a smoke in the oncology wing of a hospital. The tobacco companies have not paid nearly enough for the killing.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)