Chief Investigator Rick Earle visited Shanksville to meet with two men connected by one phone call made on the morning of September 11, 2001.
That phone call was made by Gordon Felt’s brother, and it went to the 911 center in Westmoreland County, where retired deputy emergency management coordinator Dan Stevens was working that day.
“Your brother having the hindsight, if I need help, dial 911, and he took a chance, and it worked,” said Dan Stevens.
It was the first meeting between Stevens and Felt, as they talked with Earle about that phone call Gordon’s brother made 25 years ago.
“I believe it was 9:58 when it came in, so 9:57 was when the battle started, and they charged the cockpit,” Felt said.
Edward Felt, married with two children and living in New Jersey, was on a routine business trip from Newark to San Francisco when his plane was hijacked.
Somewhere over New Stanton in Westmoreland County, using his cell phone, Felt dialed 911.
The plane was low enough at that time that the call hit a cell tower and rang at the 911 center in Greensburg.
11 Investigates obtained a recording of the phone call. 25 years later, we are hearing that call for the very first time.
Edward Felt: Hijacking in progress.
Dispatcher: Sir, I’m losing you. Where are you?
Edward Felt: United Flight 93.
Later, the dispatcher asks about his location.
Dispatcher: Okay, where you at?
Edward Felt: I don’t know where the plane is.
Dispatcher: Where did you take off at?
Edward Felt: Newark to San Francisco.
“Heart-wrenching, heart-wrenching. I listened to it once, and I won’t ever listen to it again,” said Gordon Felt.
“You could tell the panic. You could tell something was awry on that plane,” said Stevens.
Stevens, who listened to the call multiple times that day and again 25 years later, praised Ed Felt for providing critical information and the dispatcher for asking all the right questions, under very unique circumstances.
“What flight were you on? How many people are on board?”
What’s the situation? He was asking the right questions that he was never trained to ask because we don’t anticipate calls from an aircraft on a routine basis,” said Stevens.
Earle: He provided some pretty good information in that 70-second call?
Gordon Felt: Yes, you can read the transcript and it lays out exactly what was said back and forth. Ed was a problem solver. That’s what he was known to do.
The call, one of more than 30 made from United Flight 93 that September morning, came in at 9:58 a.m. after passengers learned what had already happened in New York and Washington.
Gordon Felt says they voted to fight back and storm the cockpit to take on the hijackers.
“When I stand here on this overlook my thoughts go to those final seconds,” said Felt.
At 10:03 am, the plane crashed in an abandoned strip mine near Shanksville, Pa.
The passengers and crew prevented the hijackers from reaching the US Capitol or the White House.
“There’s no question, they won the first battle in the war on terrorism and the symbolism...these were citizen soldiers, these were the minutemen of the new century,” said Felt.
“These people were the unsung heroes on Flight 93. They had no idea what they were facing on the other side of that cockpit door, but that didn’t stop them. They did what they had to do to make sure no other lives were lost,” said Stevens.
As the President of the Families of Flight 93, Gordon Felt is a frequent visitor to the memorial, a final resting spot for his older brother.
“The actual sacred ground is where?” asked Stevens as they walked the flight path.
“You see that field?” replied Felt.
“Where the rock is?” asked Stevens.
For Dan Stevens, it was his first visit to the granite memorial that is now a National Park.
It opened about a decade ago.
It was also Stevens first encounter with the man whose brother made that 911 call from Flight 93.
“Being able to meet face to face and touch hands together, and recognize the integral role you or they played, through that event makes it all come to a realization,” said Stevens.
“Two men forever connected by one phone call made just minutes before that plane crashed in this field behind me, a field that is now a memorial, a tribute to the passengers and crew who fought back against the hijackers that September morning 25 years ago,” said Earle.
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