35 minutes, 25 years ago

Sept. 11, 2026

Sometimes I think about the passengers on United 93.

“Mark, apparently it’s terrorists, and they’re hell-bent on crashing the aircraft. So if you can, try to take over the aircraft.”

At 9:58 a.m., Alice Hoagland was leaving a voicemail for her son, Mark Bingham, originally seated in 4D, behind two of the four hijackers.

“There’s one flight that they say is headed toward San Francisco. It might be yours.”

It was.

“So if you can, group some people and perhaps do the best you can to get control of it. I love you, sweetie. Good luck. Bye-bye.”

The passenger revolt was already underway. A random group of 40 civilians had heard the news from the ground. A decision was made.

A group of us are getting ready to do something, Thomas Burnett Jr., the COO of a medical devices company, told his wife by phone.

Aboard United 93, the timeline was so short it can take your breath away, even a quarter century later: There were about 35 minutes between the hijackers breaching the cockpit and the passengers forcing the plane down, about 126 miles short of its D.C. target. As everything else was failing that day, the passengers of United 93 succeeded.

Twenty-two months earlier, the security expert Joseph Cyrulik had warned that a perfectly-timed, well-executed, large-scale terrorist attack on the homeland “could destroy the people’s faith in their government, in their military and in themselves.” And so it was: The Iraq war, in the first decade after September 11, boomeranged into the self-defeating nationalism of the past decade—the indecency, the hubris, the half measures, the cut corners, the paralysis. In a way, September 11 didn’t end until nearly 20 years later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when Americans themselves struck the U.S. Capitol and finished what al-Qaeda could not. “I fought in Iraq and I have never encountered the violence I did out there today,” a Capitol Police officer reportedly said in a ransacked Statuary Hall.

Hard to wrap your brain around what’s happened these past 25 years. Too many dots to connect. Too little makes sense. But aboard United 93, there were just those 35 minutes. It was still enough time to take care of practical matters, and matters of the heart.

Linda Gronlund was in row 26 when she reached her sister’s voicemail. “All my stuff is in the safe,” she said. “The, uh, the safe is in my closet in my bedroom. The combination is you push C for clear and then 0-9-1-3 and then, uh, and then it should—and maybe pound—and then it should unlock.” 

Six rows back, Todd Beamer asked a GTE phone supervisor to contact his family.

Just behind Beamer, Honor Elizabeth Wainio called her stepmother. This is going to be harder on you than it will be on me, she said, and I want you to be okay.

The word “hero” gets swung around a lot. What is painfully, finally true about September 11 is that very little could be done that day to change its course. Before we knew what was going on, it was too late. We were virtually powerless.

Except on that one plane.

The passengers could’ve been frozen by shock or distracted by hope—maybe someone was coming to save them. Instead, their thoughts and actions were clear. They would save some of us.

They armed themselves with forks and butter knives. Flight attendants boiled water in coffee pots. They readied a drink cart as a battering ram. And they finished their messages to those on the ground.

“They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you. Goodbye.”

“Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

“They forced their way into the cockpit. Babe, I called to tell you I love you.” •