The situation wasn’t really the same with the 9/11 hijackings because the passengers on the first three planes didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision about the best way to respond. They mistakenly believed, as in most previous plane hijackings, that it was primarily their lives the terrorists were threatening. In that situation rushing the terrorists (and likely taking down the plane in the process) wouldn’t have likely resulted in a better outcome than short-term cooperation. Only the passengers on United 93 had enough information to know that the terrorists’ primary goal was to use the planes as weapons and they were likely to die in any event.
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