The story...

Flight 93 didn't crash as reported. Instead it landed safely in Cleveland, as reported by more than one news story.

A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White.
 
White said the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated.
 
United identified the plane as Flight 93. The airline did not say how many people were aboard the flight.
http://www.rense.com/general56/flfight.htm

Our take...

Liz Foreman, whose name was attached to this story, tried to clear it up in February 2006.

I thought it was time to set the record straight on a website error that's gotten out of hand.

I've been getting calls and e-mails for several years, all from folks who have seen my byline on a story (Plane Lands In Cleveland; Bomb Feared Aboard) about Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.

The story in question, an Associated Press bulletin, was posted on WCPO.com during the morning of September 11, 2001. The story stated that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland. This was not true.

Once the AP issued a retraction a few minutes later, we removed the link.

There were two problems:

1)I only removed the link TO the story. We did not remove the story itself. This was my error probably due to the busy nature of the day - I was the only person updating the website until about noon that day, and things were crazier than they’d ever been.

2) The byline was incorrect. In my haste, I pasted the “Reported by: 9News Staff” byline from a previous story, but this was actually an Associated Press story.

Sometime in 2003 I received an e-mail inquiring about the story. I quickly removed the story, and wrote back to the person, thanking them for the heads up about the incorrect story.

Things didn't stop there.

Messages and phone calls started coming in about "Why did the government make me remove the story?" As is the nature of the net, folks had gotten a hold of the old story and posted it on their own blogs, fueling even more interest in the situation.

So, for everyone who is still wondering about this story, here are some frequently asked questions. I'm hoping this clears everything up once and for all!


FAQ

1. Where did the original story come from?
The story was an Associated Press bulletin that came across the news wires. Associated Press is a news service that many news organizations subscribe to for non-local news. The idea is that a local news organization can’t possibly have reporters everywhere in the world, so for that reason, we publish stories written by Associated Press journalists.

2. So you didn’t report the story yourself?
No, I work at the website in Cincinnati. I generally do not do any reporting out in the field. Also, I was not in Cleveland, nor does WCPO-TV have a Cleveland-based reporter. If you’re not familiar with the geography of Ohio, Cleveland is a good four hours away from us.

There were two problems:

1) I only removed the link TO the story. We did not remove the story itself. This was my error probably due to the busy nature of the day - I was the only person updating the website until about noon that day, and things were crazier than they’d ever been.

2) The byline was incorrect. In my haste, I pasted the “Reported by: 9News Staff” byline from a previous story, but this was actually an Associated Press story.

3. Why didn’t you remove the problem story page from the outset?
My mistake, that’s why. I removed the link TO the story, but didn’t remove the actual story. Then, the story page was indexed by the major search engines. I didn’t even know the story hadn’t been removed until after I was contacted by a member of the public.

4. Why DID you remove the page?
Because it was in error.

5. Why did you create this FAQ page? Isn’t that just fueling the fire?
I’ve been getting a ton of phone calls and e-mails about this recently and answering everyone would make it hard for me to get my day job – running the website – accomplished. Also, unlike the old media paradigm, which is “ignore it and it’ll go away,” the Internet means a two-way conversation with our website users. So, in the interest of media transparency, this is my attempt to clear the air.
http://blogs.scripps.com/wcpo/staff/2006/02/wcpocoms_flight_93_story.html

So what did land at Cleveland? It seems to have been Delta Flight 1989. This was initially misidentified as Flight 93, as reported here.

Air traffic controllers believed they had a hijacked plane in the air over Ohio on Sept. 11. They just didn't know which plane.

During tense moments that morning at Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center, the first guess was that Delta Flight 1989 was hijacked, not United Airlines Flight 93.

“We knew right away we had a problem. The first thought was, "Is that Delta 1989?' ” said Rick Kettell, manager of the Federal Aviation Administration's busiest regional center.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/08/15/loc_sept_11_tension.html

However there's no shortage of documentation online to show the planes real identity Here's an account from someone who was on the plane, for instance.

My husband] and I and six other fellow [...] employees were on the 8 am flight from Boston to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but we were on the Delta flight [1989], the one out of three 8am flights departing Logan that did not get hijacked. Instead, we were forced to make an emergency landing in Cleveland because there were reports that a bomb or hijacking was taking place on our plane. The pilot had radioed that there was suspicious activity in the cabin since one of the passengers was speaking urgently on his cellphone and ignored repeated flight attendant requests to stop using his cell phone while in flight. Also, there was an irregularity in the passenger manifest because there were two people [with the same middle eastern name] who were listed but only one aboard.
http://256.com/gray/thoughts/2001/20010912/1989_9_11_travel.html

Other news stories give similar accounts:

No explosives were found aboard a Delta flight from Boston that was forced to land at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport because of fears it had been hijacked, city officials said.

The Federal Aviation Administration had been informed at 9:45 a.m. of a possible hijacking of a plane headed for Cleveland, said FBI spokesman Mark Bullock.

Flight 1989 to Los Angeles was not hijacked but was grounded by Delta because it was in the same flight pattern as a plane that was hijacked and struck the World Trade Center in New York, Bullock said.
http://thepost.baker.ohiou.edu/archives3/sep01/091101/brief16.html

The Cleveland Free Times investigated the story, too, but found little support.

Rumor One: Cleveland Mayor Mike White told reporters that United 93 haD landed safely at Hopkins on 9/11.

Evidence For: At 11:43 a.m. the morning of 9/11, the following Associated Press news bulletin appeared on the Web site for Cincinnati ABC affiliate station WCPO, Channel 9: "A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White. White said the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated. United identified the plane as Flight 93."...

Evidence Against: Former Mayor White hardly ever talks to the media now, so Free Times contacted his former press secretary Della Homenik.

"It has always been my understanding that United flight 93 diverted from its intended flight plan while it was in Cleveland air space," Homenik writes in an e-mail. "I never heard a single report, from any source, either on September 11 or in its aftermath, that flight 93 landed in Cleveland."

A review of WEWS Cleveland Channel 5's live coverage of White's comments that day show that he never suggested that the grounded plane parked at the end of a Hopkins runway was United 93.

"Let me walk through the most current situation that we are grappling with," says White at the brief press conference. "At this moment, we have a Boeing 767 in a secure area of Hopkins International Airport. The initial reports were that this plane was hijacked and that there was a bomb on board. There was, before this, an additional plane in our airspace. I am told through unconfirmed reports that we could hear screaming in the control tower. This plane has been diverted from Cleveland and at last report was in the Toledo airspace."

Later, we would learn that this 767 was Delta flight 1989. It had originated from the same Boston airport as United 93, but was cleared by inspectors after landing at Hopkins. It had not been hijacked, and there was no bomb. And United 93, by the way, was a 757...

Rumor Two: United 93 deboarded at NASA Glenn Research Center and its passengers were taken away in an unmarked shuttle.

Evidence For: Newspaper articles published after 9/11 suggest there were two planes, not one, that were forced to land in Cleveland. One was Delta 1989. The other is often referred to as "Flight X" but is assumed by many to be United 93.

The Web site 911review.org cites real articles from the Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon Journal and USA Today to establish these facts:

> A plane landed in Cleveland at 10:10 a.m.

> Delta 1989 landed here at 10:45 a.m., and its 69 passengers and nine crew members were loaded onto buses and taken to Federal Aviation Administration headquarters at Hopkins.

> At 11:15 a.m., 200 passengers from the other plane were taken to NASA Glenn, whose employees had already evacuated, to be interviewed by FBI agents. (While United 93 is known to have carried 37 passengers and seven crew members, conspiracy theorists are quick to point out that if the passengers and crew of all four flights that crashed on 9/11 had been consolidated at some secret location, the number would be right about 200.)

Bloggers claims that eyewitnesses saw civilians being loaded onto military bus ses at NASA Glenn. They were whisked away to some undisclosed location, never to be seen again.

The FAA refused Free Times' repeated requests for interviews. The media department at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport stopped returning our calls when we asked to speak with the safety director who worked at the airport on 9/11.

During a recent layover in Cleveland, Loose Change producer Jason Bermas questioned an airport employee about the events of 9/11. "She said, "Well, that one Delta flight was grounded here and another was grounded at NASA Glenn,'" Bermas recalls. "We told her we had heard the plane at NASA was United 93. But then she just went into the official version of events and said it was definitely not United 93. But there was another plane at NASA Glenn that day and no one has ever explained that. I'm hoping a news agency will go over and follow up on that."

Evidence Against: We did. And Bermas is right, there was another plane grounded at NASA Glenn on 9/11. But it wasn't United 93.

Vernon "Bill" Wessel is the director of safety and mission assurance at NASA Glenn. He was in his office the morning of 9/11 when an employee called him from home. "He says, "Bill, I don't know if this is a hoax or what, but I just saw a plane crash into the World Trade Center.'" Wessel says he hung up and raced downstairs to a conference room. Center Director Don Campbell joined him. A projector beamed the television's image onto a large screen just as United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

An emergency meeting of directors was called, and an order to evacuate NASA was issued. When Wessel learned that Delta 1989 was stuck on the tarmac at Hopkins and that it might contain explosives, he decided it would be unwise to use the front gate, closest to the airport, to evacuate the 3,500 NASA Glenn employees under his watch. E-mails and phone calls were sent out to different departments at the research facility, informing everyone to leave via the back gate. "It took about an hour and a half to evacuate everybody," Wessel recalls.

So what about the so-called Flight X?

"A KC-135 had to come back to the hangar," says Wessel, as if realizing for the first time that this aircraft may have caused some undue confusion. A team of scientists from the Johnson Space Center in Houston had flown to Cleveland on this KC-135 to conduct micro-gravity experiments. (Also known as "the vomit comet," KC-135's are used to simulate weightlessness. The plane soars to high altitudes, then falls back toward the ground, giving passengers a few seconds of zero-G experience. Scenes for the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 were filmed in one.)

The visiting scientists could not return to Houston as scheduled on 9/11 once the FAA ordered all planes to land. "After the facility closed, we had to take those scientists to a hotel." The scientists, dressed as civilians, were boarded onto shuttle buses.
http://www.freetimes.com/story/681

There are more complex theories about this, though, and you can read one here. We’ll be adding further comments on this issue in the future.