This paper applies utilitarian ethical reasoning to the events surrounding United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, to evaluate whether shooting down a hijacked aircraft can be morally justified. The analysis examines three core questions: whether such a policy effectively protects cities and infrastructure, whether it deters future terrorism, and whether the harm inflicted on passengers aboard is outweighed by potential benefits to the broader public. Drawing a parallel to the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, the paper argues that a shoot-down policy may inadvertently serve terrorist goals by spreading fear and making transportation infrastructure a perpetual target, ultimately concluding that alternative preventive measures are preferable.
The utilitarian approach to ethical dilemmas requires that the various courses of action available and their respective consequences be studied in detail. The benefits or harms of each option are weighed so that the course of action producing the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people can be chosen. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001, this framework yields a challenging set of questions about state power, individual life, and the unintended consequences of security policy.
United Airlines Flight 93 was the last of the four hijacked planes to go down in the United States on September 11, 2001. It crashed, killing 44 persons — 40 passengers and crew members and four terrorists. The widely circulated account holds that passengers, after learning of the other hijacked planes via mobile phones, stormed the cockpit and forced the plane down. Alternate versions have suggested that the U.S. military shot the plane down, or that a bomb detonated aboard; both claims have been denied by officials.
The location of U.S. Air Force jets at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 9:35 a.m. — precisely the time that Flight 93 turned almost 180 degrees off course toward Washington — lent credence to the shoot-down theory (Carlin, 2002). However, the shoot-down scenario was effectively discounted following the congressional submission of the events (United States Government Printing Office, 2001). This paper proceeds on the assumption that the passengers themselves crashed the plane, and evaluates the ethics of a hypothetical shoot-down policy through a utilitarian lens.
From the perspective of the terrorists, the aim was to create fear, spread terror, and inflict maximum damage on the lives and property of those the terrorist organization regarded as enemies. The individuals who carried out the attack were already prepared to die; to a terrorist engaged in such an act, his or her own life carries no value. From their standpoint, the plane had to crash in a populated area, causing maximum damage and subsequent chaos.
The passengers of the plane had a right to safe travel and deserved consideration in any decision that would cost them their lives. If an alternative existed that could destroy the terrorists while saving the passengers, that would clearly be the best option. No such alternative was available in this case, however. The remaining option — shooting down the plane — would kill all passengers and crew while potentially limiting damage to populated areas and key infrastructure on the ground. A utilitarian must therefore ask whether the lives saved on the ground outweigh the lives lost in the aircraft.
The ethical analysis generates three distinct questions:
1. Does shooting down planes that deviate from flight plans effectively protect vital installations and cities, and is such action justified? From the utilitarian concept of the "greater good," shooting down a plane over a sparsely populated or unpopulated area — though a grave tragedy for crew and passengers — could in theory save larger numbers of people on the ground. However, the chance of such a favorable location is remote, because terrorists are aware that a plane may be shot down within a critical window of time. In that scenario, a shoot-down policy does not specifically guarantee any particular outcome.
2. Will such a policy deter terrorists from using the same methods in the future, and what are the probabilities? A terrorist organization's primary aim is to spread terror. If every plane in the sky becomes liable to be shot down, that possibility itself becomes an instrument of terror — one that the state inadvertently amplifies. The terrorists may therefore achieve a secondary goal without even completing their primary mission.
3. Is shooting down a plane — killing all aboard — justified relative to the probable harm if the plane reaches its intended target? This question requires probabilistic reasoning about the scale of harm in each scenario, as well as an assessment of who bears moral responsibility. A utilitarian calculus must account not only for lives lost but also for the broader social effects of the policy, including the erosion of public trust in air travel and state institutions.
"Moscow siege as analogy for unintended terror consequences"
The solution to a hijacked plane is not shooting it down, because doing so will aid the terrorist in spreading terror and turn the policy itself into a facilitating weapon. The utilitarian calculus, properly extended to include second-order social consequences, does not support a blanket shoot-down policy. The preferable alternative is to develop methods that prevent aircraft from being commandeered in the first place — making cockpits tamper-proof and pursuing other means of countering terrorist takeovers. As the Transportation Security Administration and related agencies have recognized since 2001, prevention at the point of entry is a more effective and ethically defensible strategy than reactive destruction of aircraft in flight. Shooting planes down is not a good option.
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