Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney Was Sent to Ram Flight 93

Jimmy ParkerSeptember 12, 202610

A Mission No American Pilot Should Have Had to Fly

Former Air Force Lieutenant Heather “Lucky” Penney has shared the grim reality of what she was prepared to do on September 11, 2001, when United Airlines Flight 93 was believed to be heading toward Washington, D.C. Penney was only 26 years old at the time, and the mission placed before her was as clear as it was terrible: stop a hijacked airliner full of innocent Americans before it could strike the nation’s capital. This was not a movie script, and it was not a training drill. It was the kind of duty that reminds us what military service can demand when evil shows up without warning.

Flight 93 Never Reached Its Target

Flight 93 was the fourth plane hijacked on September 11, and it was the only one that did not reach its intended target. According to the account, the plane was delayed and remained on the ground while the other hijacked planes were already in the air. After takeoff, Flight 93 flew west for about 46 minutes before hijackers stormed the cockpit. Controllers heard “Mayday” and “Get out of here!” before one of the hijackers took control and turned the plane toward Washington, D.C. Passengers and crew used airphones and cell phones, learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and voted to fight back. Todd Beamer’s last recorded words, remembered across the country, were, “Are you ready? Okay.” Then came the words that still carry weight more than two decades later: “Let’s roll.”

Penney Says the Jets Had No Live Missiles

Before the passengers and crew forced the outcome in Pennsylvania, military leaders faced a decision almost too heavy to imagine. Penney said the pilots knew the target would be “an airliner full of innocent Americans,” but they did not have live missiles or real weapons on board. “So we knew that this would be a suicide mission,” she said. She explained that if they had to take down the airliner, they would have to ram their jets into it. As she was zipping up her G-suit, “Sass” told her, “I’ll take the cockpit.” His plan, she said, was to fly into the cockpit to take out the terrorists and flight controls, while she would ram her jet into the tail of the aircraft. There is no easy way to read that without pausing. These were Americans preparing to give up everything to save countless others.

The Passengers Had Already Done the Job

Penney said they had to assume the White House, Congress, and the nation’s most cherished institutions could be next. At the time, she said, they did not know Flight 93 had already crashed. They did not know the passengers had already done the job. Penney also said that in many ways she felt like it was a “mission failure,” pointing to the lack of imagination before the attacks, the fact that they were not sitting alert, the lack of live weapons, and that they were too late. “Thank God for the passengers,” she said, because without them, she believed the authorization came too late to make a difference and Flight 93 would have made it. That is a hard truth, and it makes the courage on that plane even more sacred.

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A Memorial for American Courage

The bravery of Todd Beamer and the other passengers and crew has been honored through the Flight 93 National Memorial, which is run by the National Park Service. The memorial includes the Wall of Names for the passengers and crew, the Tower of Voices, a visitor center, and the crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The crash site is treated as a burial ground and is not walked on by the public. That is fitting. Those Americans were not soldiers, but when the moment came, they acted with the courage of warriors. Their stand saved lives, and their sacrifice remains one of the clearest examples of ordinary citizens rising to meet an extraordinary evil.

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