page_title: United Airlines Flight 93
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: United Airlines Flight 93 / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Former First Ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush survey the site of the Flight 93 airplane crash in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, September 11, 2010.
context_page_description: United Airlines Flight 93 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight that was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists on board, as part of the September 11 attacks. It crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, during an attempt by the passengers and crew to regain control. All 44 people on board were killed, including the four hijackers, but no one on the ground was injured. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 757–222, was flying United Airlines' daily scheduled morning flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to San Francisco International Airport in California.
  The hijackers stormed the aircraft's cockpit 46 minutes after takeoff. The captain and first officer struggled with the hijackers, which was transmitted to Air Traffic Control. Ziad Jarrah, who had trained as a pilot, took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the east coast, in the direction of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, considered principal instigators of the attacks, have claimed that the intended target was the U.S. Capitol Building.
context_section_description: Flight 93 fragmented violently upon impact. Most of the aircraft wreckage was found near the impact crater. Investigators found very light debris including paper and nylon scattered up to eight miles (13 km) from the impact point in New Baltimore. Other tiny aircraft fragments were found 1.5 miles (2.4 km) away at Indian Lake. All human remains were found within a 70-acre (28 ha) area surrounding the impact point.  Somerset County Coroner Wally Miller was involved in the investigation and identification of the remains.  In examining the wreckage, the only human body part he could see was part of a backbone. Miller later found and identified 1,500 pieces of human remains totaling about 600 pounds (272 kg), or eight percent of the total.  The rest of the remains were consumed by the impact. Investigators identified four victims by September 22 and eleven by September 24. They identified another by September 29. 34 passengers were identified by October 27. All the people on board the flight were identified by December 21. Human remains were so fragmented that investigators could not determine whether any victims were dead before the plane crashed.  Death certificates for the 40 victims listed the cause of death as homicide and listed the cause of death for the four hijackers as suicide. The remains and personal effects of the victims were returned to the families. The remains of the hijackers, identified by the process of elimination, were turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as evidence.
  Investigators also found a knife concealed in a cigarette lighter. They located the flight data recorder on September 13 and the cockpit voice recorder the following day. The voice recorder was found buried 25 feet (8 m) below the crater. The FBI initially refused to release the voice recording, rejecting requests by Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher and family members of those on board. They later allowed the relatives of the Flight 93 victims to listen to the recording in a closed session on April 18, 2002. Jurors for the Zacarias Moussaoui trial heard the tape as part of the proceedings and the transcript was publicly released on April 12, 2006.
  All passengers and crew on board Flight 93 were nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal on September 19, 2001. Congressman Bill Shuster introduced a bill to this effect in 2006, and they were granted on September 11, 2014.
  Beamer's final words, "let's roll", became a national catchphrase. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey changed the name of Newark's airport from Newark International Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport and a flag now flies over Terminal A's Gate A17. Flight 93 has been the subject of various films and documentaries including The Flight That Fought Back, Flight 93, and the feature film United 93.
  Flight number "93" was discontinued by United Airlines after the hijacking. United has many nonstop flights from Newark to San Francisco. As of May 2016, there is still an 8:00 A.M. flight from Newark to San Francisco, which still uses a Boeing 757, but it is now Flight 497. It was reported in May 2011 that United was reactivating flight numbers 93 and 175 as a codeshare operated by Continental, sparking an outcry from some in the media and the labor union representing United pilots. United said the reactivation was a mistake and said the numbers were "inadvertently reinstated", and would not be reactivated.
caption: First Lady Michelle Obama and Former First Lady Laura Bush survey the site of the Flight 93 airplane crash in Stonycreek Township on September 11, 2010.
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