Heroes Of The Week: First Responders

United 23

On Thursday, I watched a program called Grounded on 9/11 on The History Channel. The show details the FAA's response to the attacks on September 11, 2001 to order all planes out of the air.

Almost as an aside, the show's narrator mentions United 23 — a 767 headed for Los Angeles that morning. Apparently it was going to be another hijacked airliner. I did some searching on the web and the amount of info is limited and I had to do quite a bit of surfing to find much at all.

I did find a site about a book called Stand Down by Will Thomas. Here is a copy/paste from that linked site:

UNITED 23 TO LA THWARTED
United Flight 23, prevented from pushback by Norman Mineta’s emergency grounding orders. Onboard the fuel-heavy airliner three angry Arabian passengers loudly demanded that the flight proceed to Los Angeles. Kicked off the plane, the would-be hijackers vanished before police showed up.

The incident is mentioned on the site of U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois...only it says the flight was going to depart from Newark to Los Angeles.

It is also mentioned on a site called Cooperative Research.

I can't find it now, but somewhere along the way of researching this I read that it was mentioned in the movie United 93 which I didn't see.

United.com now shows United 23 departs JFK to Los Angeles. They may have changed it but I doubt it. This is the second airport this story now involves as the point of departure.

Is this an urban legend?

Is this unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

Why is this the first time I've heard of it?

Have any of you, my gentle readers, ever heard of this???
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