I thought they shot the plane down over the studio where they filmed the fake moonlanding, just to destroy as much evidence as possible.
So I take it you conclude the passengers knew they were ‘trapped rats’ and were going to die either way, so might as well save others in the process. Since they died in the process and saved many lives (potentially), and still did have the possibility of taking back the plane, I must still award them hero status.
For the most part, yes, kanicbird. (Actually, I think they probably had some vain hope that they could seize control of the plane. Still, if they had a modicum of common sense, they must surely have realized that the deck was stacked heavily against them.)
So yes, they were heroes in my book.
mangeorge insists that these were ordinary people who simply tried to handle a difficult situation. Frankly, I think that’s understating the significance of their actions–but either way, they’re still heroes. Yes, there are other ordinary people who will occasionally rise to perform heroic deeds, but that doesn’t make them any less heroic.
Heck, the fact that they were ordinary individuals–apparently without any special training–makes that gesture all the more noble. I salute them.
Utterly confident??? If I said that, I most certainly withdraw it. Utterly desperate? That would be a reasonable assumption.
You know, at first they were heroes because they beat down the door, wrestled with the terrorists, grabbed the controls and dove the plane into the ground, carefully avoiding populated areas. Now they’re heroes because they banged on the door, making the terrorists nervous.
If that had been me and a group of people I know, I’m pretty sure we would have taken the only (slim) chance open to us and tried to save our (and the other passengers) asses. I’d have been pissing my pants, but I’d have tried.
Have any of you folks ever been in any real danger?
Something I wondered about when I read the report’s conclusions: On Flight 93, the passengers tried very hard to get into the cockpit, apparently even smashing a drink cart into the door, and they didn’t succeed. The door remained locked, and the hijacker remained in control. On the other 911 planes, if the pilots (the REAL pilots) had bolted their doors against the hijackers and headed for the nearest airport, instead of apparently entering the passenger cabin to see what the trouble was, could those planes have been saved? I suspect that if the hijackers had started trying to smash through locked cockpit doors on those planes, those passengers might have tried to resist too. I know that today cockpit doors are supposed to be reinforced and the pilots are supposed to lock themselves inside no matter what, but even by pre-911 standards it doesn’t sound like the cockpit was that easy to get into. Did the hijackers rely on the idea that they could simply lure the pilots out of the cockpit, rather than force their way in? (I realize that there is no way to know this as a matter of fact, but someone who knows something about aircraft doors and airline procedures might be able to speculate thoughtfully.)
Thing is, pre-9/11, standard procedure for dealing with hijackers was to cooperate, for the most part. The goal was always to prevent the hostages from being killed. “Open the door or we’ll start killing passengers” might not work today, but it would have worked every time back then. Utter platitudes, get the plane on the ground, and let expert negotiators talk the hijackers into giving up, that’s what aircrews were supposed to do. And not without cause. Can you imagine the lawsuits if some pilot had tried to play cowboy during some hijacking and half the passengers wound up dead?
The tactic of using airliners as missiles neatly exploited the standard responses to hijackings that had been developed over the decades. And now its obsolete. In fact, it was obsolete 'round about when the passengers on Flight 93 heard about it on their cell phones and decided that if they were going to die, may as well die trying.
An odd side effect of the 9/11 attacks is that plain vanilla hijackings are now likely doomed to messy failure. It’s hard to cow people who believe they’re going to die with threats to their life, after all.
Did the hijackers say that they had a bomb? I thought I heard that - and if so, I’m sure it would’ve gained the attention of the pilots, and probably got the out of the cockpit and doing whatever was demanded of them.
Pre-9/11, it was not at all unusual for the cockpit door to remain unlocked. No need to force entry - just go up to the door and open it. So yeah, potentially it was VERY easy to enter the cockpit.
I think you may be thinking of Senator Bob Kerrey, of Nebraska (Link from the US Naval Academy, about 1/3 of the way scrolled down) rather than Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts.
WHAT? Cite???
Are you confusing Bob Kerrey with John Kerry?
John McCain has climbed a couple points in my book. I’m sure he really cares. 
The OP;
I really didn’t expect that so many would consider the passengers to be heros. Maybe I do hold the bar a little too high. When I think hero, I think of exceptional courage, above what the average (ordinary) person would do. If you describe a hero as someone who does something scary, an act that doesn’t intentionally increase their peril, then what’s left to say of those who do “intercept the bullet”, as it were?
Peace,
mangeorge
Martyr?
No, Richiam, a martyr has to die. A hero doesn’t. And heros don’t get virgins.
So that won’t work.
Well, the passengers on Flight 93 did die. Not that I’m calling them, specifically, martyrs; just answering your question.
Oh yes, they died alright. But we don’t know that they died in the hope of saving others. They could (and should) have been trying to save themselves. They knew that backing off wouldn’t save their skins. They knew they risked nothing, not really. That was made clear by what they were told on the phones.
Fair enough. But you asked, “What do we call those who “intercept the bullet”?” not “What do we call the passengers on Flight 93?” I’d still answer “martyrs” to the first question, whether or not it’s interchangeable with the second.
Y’know all this strikes me as completely silly and irrelevant.
Maybe they decided that they had nothing to lose. Maybe they came to the conclusion that this was the only slim chance they had at survival. Maybe they thought it would be better for the plane to crash than allow the hijackers to complete their mission. Maybe… maybe… maybe. We can’t know what went through each individual’s head as they struggled forward towards the cockpit in an attempt to take the controls of the plane. We can’t know what actually went through the minds of so many people we consider heros. We can only know what they did based on those thoughts.
In my opinion, as these things can only ever be, a hero is simply a brave ordinary person whose actions caused something great to happen. Be it desperation, blind adrenaline rush, or more selfless motivations, some sort of courage is involved when facing your own death. Refusing to be a passive statistic and instead rushing headlong into armed, presumably trained, terrorists? It’s easy to sit here in front of our computers and say “Well duh! Did they have any other real choice?” It’s easy to be rational, to analyze the options when you’re calmly sipping the beverage of your choice in your own home in a neighborhood you know, but in a panic situation I myself don’t tend to act totally rational. I tend to react.
These ordinary people reacted in a way that possibly saved hundreds, possibly even thousands, of other lives, as well as the more abstract damage to our nation’s infrastructure. It’s not about jingoism or the American spirit or patriotic fervor. Any group of ordinary people from any country around the world put into the same situation might’ve done the same thing… or they might have sat there as simple victims. These group of people, “ordinary” stock from “ordinary” backgrounds, attempted to do something extraordinary in an effort to save lives. That’s enough for me. I can call that heroism and not lose any sleep at night about the issue.
I think what the passengers did was brave, and can stand on it’s own, without any puffery from us. I also think that what some politicians and others did before the facts were even known, to suit their own goals, was disingenuous at best.
“Ordinary” and “hero” are mutually exclusive terms.
No, they are not. Ordinary people can indeed be heroes.
You keep getting hung up on the word “ordinary,” as though this somehow nullified their heroic nature. It does not, and I am stunned that you keep insisting that these terms are mutually exclusive.
A heroic act is certainly not an ordinary act. That’s the whole point of the word itself, that an extraordinary thing has occured.
I’m “hung up” on ordinary because I’m confident that I, and many others I know, would surely have done the same as the passengers. I’m sure of it.