The official account
Cockpit tape transcript

A VOICE, speaking rapidly in Arabic, asks in panic: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” Outside the cockpit door of United Airlines Flight 93, the screams, yells and intense violence of a passenger revolt can be heard. Men struggle with hijackers, roaring in pain. Glass smashes to the ground as the al-Qaeda pilot pitches the nose of the aircraft from side to side.

“No, not yet!” comes the reply in Arabic. “When they come, we finish it off.”

“Aghh, I’m injured!” someone screams outside.

“O Allah, O Allah,” a hijacker moans.

A male passenger roars: “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we die!” This brutal exchange was part of the soundtrack, played publicly for the first time yesterday, from the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93, 30 minutes after it had been hijacked on September 11, 2001, and moments before it hurtled at nearly 600mph into a Pennsylvania field, killing all 45 people on board.

For 32 minutes, noise and terror filled the courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, where a jury is being asked to decide whether Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man convicted in the US in connection with the September 11 plot, should be put to death.

Inside the court, in which every seat was taken, the jury and public sat transfixed as they listened. Moussaoui, legs sprawled, sat looking indifferent, a smile occasionally crossing his face. After it was over, the jury, the victims’ families, the press and the public looked pale and slightly sick.

Flight 93 had taken off at 8.42am from Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco. Investigators believe that the four hijackers intended to fly it into the US Capitol in Washington.

The hijackers, travelling first class, struck at 9.28am. While travelling at 35,000ft above eastern Ohio, the plane suddenly dropped 700ft. Air traffic control in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the cockpit.

During the first the captain, Jason Dahl, can be heard shouting “Mayday!” amid the sounds of a physical struggle. In the second, he or the first officer can be heard shouting: “Hey, get out of here! Get out of here! Get out of here!” It was from this point yesterday that the court heard the cockpit voice recording. One of the hijackers, the al-Qaeda pilot Ziad Jarrah, makes an onboard announcement: “Ladies and gentleman. Here is the captain. Please sit down. Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit.”

For the next few minutes, the other hijackers bark at the passengers in thickly accented, guttural English as they take over the main cabin.

A terrified female voice can be heard: “Please, please, please, please, please, don’t hurt me.”

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