At the World Trade Center in New York, a businessman from New Jersey named Ron Clifford straightened his yellow tie and pushed through the revolving doors leading to the lobby of the North Tower. If United Flight 93’s runway delay had lasted a little longer, the pilots, flight attendants, and passengers aboard that plane might have seen American Airlines Flight 11 zooming through cloudless blue skies toward the very tower, only fourteen miles to the northeast, where Ron awaited what he thought would be the most important meeting of his career.
It’s also possible that if Flight 93 had been delayed a bit longer, it would have been caught in a “ground stop” and would never have taken off at all.
AS UNITED FLIGHT 93 took flight and headed west, the men and women on board were in a kind of suspended animation, unaware that the world had already changed.
At 8:52 a.m., ten minutes after Flight 93 became airborne, a male flight attendant aboard United Flight 175 called the airline’s maintenance center to report the murder of both pilots, the stabbing of a flight attendant, and his belief that hijackers were flying the plane. Ten minutes passed, then a maintenance supervisor called United’s operations center in Chicago to report the hijacking of Flight 175. After initial confusion about whether the report actually involved American Flight 11, United’s managers spread word up their chain of command to United’s chief operating officer, Andy Studdert, and the company’s chief executive, James Goodwin. It took another thirty minutes to activate a crisis center at United’s Chicago headquarters.
Beginning at 9:03 a.m., several United flight dispatchers used the cockpit email system called ACARS to inform pilots that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. But those messages didn’t include specifics about hijackings, warnings to enhance cockpit security, or suggestions about other precautions.
At 9:08 a.m., United Airlines flight dispatchers based at the company’s operations headquarters in Chicago sent messages to transcontinental planes waiting to take off, informing crew that a ground stop had been placed on commercial flights at airports around New York.
Still no one sent word to Flight 93 or other vulnerable flights already in the air.
By 9:15 a.m., as the Twin Towers burned, Flight 93 had spent more than ten minutes at its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. Flight attendants would have begun cabin service. Pilots Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer Jr. engaged the 757’s autopilot as they flew west over Pennsylvania. All seemed normal.
They remained oblivious to the hijackings and suicide-murder crashes of American Flight 11 and United Flight 175 by men from the Middle East who sat in first class and business, who killed passengers and crew members, who forced their way into cockpits and took control. No one told them that a hijacker on Flight 11 had said “planes,” plural. They also hadn’t been told about the disappearance of American Flight 77, which had occurred roughly twenty minutes earlier. During communications with ground controllers, the Flight 93 pilots’ biggest worry seemed to be some light chop and a headwind that might hinder their plan to make up for the ground delay and land in San Francisco close to their scheduled arrival time of 11:14 a.m.
During fourteen routine communications from FAA ground controllers in the first minutes of Flight 93’s journey, no one mentioned to Jason Dahl or LeRoy Homer Jr. the crisis affecting at least three other westbound transcontinental flights, the fighter jets patrolling the sky over New York City, or the possibility that other commercial flights might be victimized.
Then, almost simultaneously, worry struck two individuals on the ground who had personal connections to the pilots of Flight 93. Both tried to reach the men in the cockpit.
MELODIE HOMER HEARD her alarm early that morning, then fell back asleep. As always when he flew, her husband, LeRoy, had laid out his uniform the night before, with his epaulets and ID in his pockets, so he could dress silently in the bathroom without waking her. Before he left for the ninety-minute drive from their southern New Jersey home to the Newark airport, LeRoy whispered that he was leaving. He said he’d call when he landed and that he loved her.
Later that morning, after dropping off their infant daughter at a neighbor’s house, Melodie returned home and turned on the television as she made breakfast. She watched, stunned, as a plane crashed into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. As her mind reeled, through her shock Melodie vaguely heard a newscaster say something about a possible problem with air traffic control. She grabbed a sheet of paper from the refrigerator with LeRoy’s flight information and called the United Airlines flight operations office at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, which handled all New York–area flights for the airline. She told a receptionist that LeRoy was the first officer on Flight 93, and that she worried whether he was all right. After a short hold, the receptionist returned and assured her, “I promise you, everything is okay.”
Melodie sobbed with relief. The receptionist thoughtfully asked if she wanted to send LeRoy a message through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS. Melodie took several deep breaths. Her voice cracking, she asked that the message to her husband read, “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
As sent by Tara Campbell, a United flight operations service representative, the message read: “LeRoy, Melody [sic] wants to make sure you are O.K.! Send me back a message.”
Melodie’s message reached Flight 93 at 9:22 a.m., the same time as either Jason or LeRoy casually complained about the headwinds to an air traffic controller.
ACARS messages generally arrive in the cockpit in one of two ways: either an indicator light flashes MSG, to alert pilots to a digital message on their screens, or a hard copy automatically prints out at a console between the pilots’ seats. Airline dispatchers can also alert pilots with a bell that chimes when an electronic ACARS message arrives. Campbell had the ability only to send Melodie’s message to the Flight 93 cockpit printer.
Personal messages were unusual on the ACARS system, yet despite the request that he reply, LeRoy didn’t do so. It’s possible that neither he nor Jason noticed the message, as they carried out routine duties. When she didn’t hear back, Tara Campbell sent Melodie’s message to the cockpit printer a second time, and then a third. There was still no response.
There might have been a benign if multifaceted explanation why LeRoy didn’t answer: not having been warned about multiple hijackings that had begun roughly an hour earlier; unaware of the World Trade Center crashes that had begun more than a half hour earlier; uninformed about the burning towers that Melodie had seen on television; not knowing that another transcontinental flight had disappeared from radar—without all this information, it’s possible that LeRoy couldn’t imagine why his wife was worried. With blue skies ahead and a job to do, perhaps he didn’t see a reason to reply immediately.
While she waited, Melodie held tight to the receptionist’s promise that “everything is okay.”
AT NEARLY THE same time, without direction from airline officials, the FAA, or anyone else, one midlevel United Airlines employee felt stirred by the same cautious impulse that seized Melodie Homer.
At sixty-two, balding and ruddy-cheeked, a hobby sailor in his free time, Ed Ballinger had started working for United Airlines in 1958 as a teenage weather clerk. Forty-three years later, he’d risen to transcontinental dispatcher in the airline’s Chicago operations headquarters. Ballinger wasn’t scheduled to work September 11, but he owed his employer a day, so he arrived at eight o’clock Eastern time and began his shift.
Ballinger’s job at United called for him to monitor the progress of flights assigned to him, to inform pilots of safety information, and to cancel or redirect flights that he and the pilots believed couldn’t operate without undue risk. He based his decisions on a company-wide priority list called the Rule of Five: Safety, Service, Profitability, Integrity, and