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Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely decide what is or isn’t true in this case because no one on the flight survived. To prepare for their roles, the actors participated in face-to-face interviews with the families of those they would portray. The filmmakers also used the phone calls made by passengers to loved ones as a way to recreate the events of the flight. But no matter how thoroughly they researched - and they were very thorough - some liberties had to be taken.

What the Movie Got Right

On September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 was scheduled for a domestic flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, to San Francisco. But there were four hijackers on board the plane. Before takeoff, passengers were told that the flight would be delayed because of heavy flight traffic. About 46 minutes after takeoff, the hijackers made their move. One of them pulled out a fake bomb and the four of them took control of the flight. Holding sharp objects, they drove the passengers to the back of the plane to take over the cockpit.

One of the hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, a trained pilot, took over the aircraft and turned it around towards Washington DC. Amidst the chaos, several passengers began to suspect that the bomb was a fake. They were also able to make phone calls and found out that other planes had been hijacked. Having learned of the fate of the other hijacked planes, they slowly realized that these men had no intention of landing safely.

The passengers decided that they had to take matters into their own hands if they were to have any chance of surviving. They attempted to regain control of the airplane. There was a passenger on board who was a pilot; their plan was to have him land since the original pilots were now dead.

Although the passengers were able to successfully stop the hijackers from reaching their target, the plane crashed in a nearby field in Pennsylvania. No one survived. It was later revealed - through the recovered flight recorders - that the action of the passengers was what prevented the hijackers from succeeding. United Flight 93 was the only plane that did not reach the hijackers’ target.

But United 93 was also accurate in showing some of what happened off the plane. As The Washington Post pointed out, the movie was at times more honest than the government’s own account of these events. According to the government’s story, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) began tracking United 93 at 9:16 am but as it was later revealed the hijacking didn’t occur until 9:28 am. Another inaccuracy reported was that fighter jets were dispatched to intercept the plane. But, as the movie states, military commanders had not been notified that United Flight 93 was hijacked until four minutes after it had gone down. And the nearest fighter jets were 100 miles away.

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