Followed by a voice exclaiming, in Arabic, “They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside … Hold.”
Then, from several English speakers in unison, “Hold the door …” And from a single English speaker, “Stop him,” followed repeatedly by “Sit down! Sit down!” Then, again from an English speaker, “Let’s get them …”
Flight 93, now down to five thousand feet, had begun rolling left and right. The pilot of a light aircraft, on a mapping assignment for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, saw the airliner at about this moment. “The wings started to rock,” he recalled. “The rocking stopped and started again. A violent rocking back and forth.”
Jeremy Glick’s father-in-law, listening intently on the phone his daughter had handed him, now heard screams in the background. On the Cockpit Voice Recorder, there is the sound of combat continuing. Then, in Arabic:
“There is nothing … Shall we finish it off?”
“No. Not yet.”
“When they all come, we finish it off.”
Then, from Tom Burnett: “I am injured.”
The Flight Data Recorder indicates that the plane pitched up and down, climbed to ten thousand feet, turned. Glick’s father-in-law, phone clapped to his ear, heard more shrieks, muffled now, like those of people “riding on a roller coaster.”
In Arabic, on the voice recorder, “Oh Allah! Oh Allah! Oh Gracious!”
In English, “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die!”
In Arabic, “Up down. Up down … Up down!”
From a distance, perhaps from Todd Beamer, “Roll it!”
Crashing sounds, then, in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! … Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?”
“Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.”
“Cut off the oxygen! Cut off the oxygen! Cut off the oxygen! … Up down. Up, down … Up down.”
More violent noises, for as long as a minute, then—apparently by a native English speaker: “Shut them off! … Go! … Go! … Move! … Move! … Turn it up.”
In Arabic, “Down, down … Pull it down! Pull it down! DOWN!”
Apparently from an English speaker, “Down. Push, push, push, push, push … push.”
In Arabic, “Hey! Hey! Give it to me. Give it to me … Give it to me. Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me … Give it to me.”
Intermittent loud “air noise” on the cockpit recorder.
Moments later, in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”
Sounds of further struggle, and a loud shout by a native English speaker, “No!!!”
Two seconds later, in Arabic, in a whisper now, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”
Jeremy Glick’s father-in-law, still listening on the ground, heard high-pitched screams coming over the line Glick had left open when he left to join the rush to the cockpit. Then “wind sounds” followed by banging noises, as though the phone aboard the plane was repeatedly banging on a hard surface.
After that, silence on the phone. Silence on the Cockpit Voice Recorder. Then, in less than a second, the recording ended.
NEAR THE LITTLE TOWN of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a man working in a scrapyard had seen an airliner, flying low but seemingly trying to climb, just clear a nearby ridge. The assistant chief of Shanksville’s volunteer fire department had been talking on the phone with his sister, who said she could see a large airplane “nosediving, falling like a stone.” A witness who saw it from his porch said it made a “sort of whistling” noise.
Half a mile away, another man saw the final plunge. It was “barely fifty feet above me,” he said, “rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly dipped and it just crashed … There was this big fireball and then a huge cloud of smoke.”
United Airlines Flight #93 Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript
Key:
Bolded text = English translation from Arabic
10:00:06
There is nothing
.
10:00:07
Is that it? Shall we finish it off?
10:00:08
No. Not yet
.
10:00:09
When they all come, we finish it off
.
10:00:11
There is nothing
.
10:00:13
Unintelligible.
10:00:14
.
10:00:15
.
10:00:16
Unintelligible.
10:00:21
.
10:00:22
Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh Gracious
.
10:00:25
.
10:00:29
Up, down. Up, down, in the
10:00:33
The
.
10:00:37
