Introduction

FLIGHT 93 is a film about 9/11.

It tells the story of the day through a meticulous re-enactment of events surrounding United 93, the last of the four hijacked aircraft, in the belief that by examining this single event something much larger can be found – the shape of our world today.

By a quirk of fate Flight 93 was delayed on the runway at Newark airport for 45 minutes. By the time it was airborne, the other three planes had reached their intended targets. As a result, the forty passengers and crew on board Flight 93 were the first to inhabit our new and terrifying post 9/11 world.

The terrible dilemma those passengers faced is the same we have been struggling with ever since. Do we sit passively and hope this all turns out okay? Or do we fight back and strike at them before they strike at us? And what will be the consequences if we do?

That is why the story of Flight 93 continues to command our attention. Although we can only dimly understand what must have happened on that ninety minute flight, we can know from the two dozen phone calls and from the 30 minutes of Cockpit Voice recordings that it dramatizes and symbolizes everything that we face today.

Made with the full support of the families of those on board, FLIGHT 93 will track in real time the dramatic story of what happened inside the aircraft as well as on the ground, as passengers, crew, Civilian Air Traffic Controllers and Military Command Centers struggle to make sense of an unimagined and unimaginable crisis.

The film begins on a normal September morning at Newark airport. Crew members prepare for a routine commuter flight to San Francisco. They make safety checks, assign tasks, fuel the plane. Passengers arrive, check in, make last minute calls to colleagues and families before boarding the plane. As the cabin doors are hermetically sealed they all believe that everything is normal. That they are safe from the dangers of a turbulent world. But sitting in four first class seats right next to them is an Al Qaeda cell.

And so as the hijack unfolds, the film moves between the passengers and crew in the air and civilian and military air traffic controllers on the ground as each tries desperately to avert the flight’s progress towards the Capitol Building in the heart of Washington D.C.

FLIGHT 93 will take us through the events of 9/11 as they happen in real time – all the confusion, violence, courage and endurance of a day that changed our lives forever.