On September 11, 2001, at 8:00 AM, United Airlines Flight 93 was scheduled to depart from Newark International Airport. However, after just a one-minute delay in departing from the gate, it found itself prioritized behind several other airplanes, experiencing heavy traffic. This resulted in a total delay of 42 minutes, with the flight finally departing at 8:42 AM. This was just six minutes before the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

You have likely heard the stories of what happened that day. You probably know most of the facts, but unless you've heard them presented in a very specific way, the significance might escape you. This certainly escapes the most common narratives. As you might know, at about 9:20 AM, as the plane neared Cleveland, Ohio, terrorists broke into the cockpit and incapacitated the pilot and first officer, taking control of the plane and hijacking it. We know this from an air traffic controller transmission from the cockpit before it breaks into radio silence: "Mayday, hey get out of here, get out of here, get out of here," and then silence. The plane started to fly erratically after that, with its altitude suddenly dropping 700 feet, likely due to a struggle.

Air traffic controllers were now aware that there might be another hijacking. One of the flight attendants telephoned United Airlines to report the hijacking. Just six minutes later, 13 passengers aboard the plane, between the hijacking at 9:28 and the time of the crash at 10:03 AM, were able to make phone calls to their family and friends, their loved ones.

At 9:57 AM, the passengers and crew began their assault on the cockpit, likely only because they knew of what had happened earlier that morning. If they had not known, it was likely their plane would be flown into a building, and their lives were already forfeit. Standard procedures would be to cooperate with the hijackers, as this is typically how you survive a hijacking—not by resisting. However, those 13 phone calls after planes struck the World Trade Center likely changed the outcome of Flight 93 on September 11.

What's the significance of this? Think about the targets from the flight plan and the information of the plot. We have narrowed it down to either two possible targets: the White House or the Capitol Building. Consider the enormous response to 9/11, and now consider if the nation's capital, the symbol of the United States government, had been destroyed. Consider who may have been in that building at the time, such as the Vice President. This is only speculation, but consider the response if the White House had been destroyed, along with the other targets in the September 11 attacks. It doesn't take long to realize that history over the last 20 years would have been wildly different if members of the government and the nation's capital had been destroyed, instead of a plane landing in an unknown part of Pennsylvania at 10:03 AM.