What was the passenger and crew manifest for United Airlines Flight 175 and how many survived until impact?
Executive summary
United Airlines Flight 175 departed Boston for Los Angeles on September 11, 2001 with 65 people aboard — 56 passengers (including five hijackers) and nine crew — and was hijacked and flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone on board; no passengers or crew survived until impact [1] [2] [3]. Contemporary victim lists and memorial records catalog the crew and many passenger names but do not indicate any survivors from the aircraft itself [4] [5].
1. What the official manifest numbers were
Flight 175 carried nine airline crew members and 56 passengers on the morning of September 11, 2001, for a total of 65 people on board; five of those 56 passengers were the hijackers who took control of the airplane [1] [2] [3]. Multiple independent overviews and archival passenger lists repeat the same counts: nine crew and 56 paying passengers, consistent across major reference summaries and memorial compilations [1] [2] [4].
2. Who the crew were, by role where reporting permits
Reporting and memorial pages identify the flight crew as two pilots — Captain Victor Saracini and First Officer Michael Horrocks — and seven flight attendants who served aboard Flight 175, with published names appearing in survivor‑and‑victim lists and legacy pages [6] [7] [5]. Newspapers and crew memorial pages list the purser and flight attendants by name in post‑attack obituaries and compilations, which are reproduced in multiple archives and local memorial sites [6] [4] [5].
3. Passengers and the presence of hijackers
Passenger manifests and historical accounts state 56 passengers boarded in Boston, and investigators later determined five of those passengers were al‑Qaeda hijackers who participated in the takeover of the cockpit and the subsequent crash [2] [1] [3]. Reporting reconstructed passenger movements, some phone calls from passengers, and later investigative work that tied five of the boarded passengers to the hijacking plot; these conclusions are reflected in official and widely cited public records and encyclopedic summaries [2] [8].
4. Survival: how many lived until impact
All evidence in the reporting and memorial records states that the aircraft was deliberately crashed into the South Tower and that everyone aboard was killed, meaning there were no survivors among passengers or crew at the moment of impact [2] [3]. Contemporary accounts note that callers from the airplane described violence in the cabin before impact, but those calls came from passengers who did not survive the crash; mass casualty tallies and victim lists record no onboard survivors [8] [4].
5. Sources, variations and limits of the public record
The basic numeric facts — 56 passengers, nine crew, five hijackers among the passengers, and total fatalities among those aboard — are consistent across major references used here, including encyclopedic summaries and archival newspapers [1] [2] [4]. Some fan‑compiled or user‑edited pages repeat the same totals but add narrative detail that varies in emphasis; memorial and mainstream records remain the most reliable sources for names and official counts [4] [6]. This reporting is limited to what the cited sources publish: while many lists give full passenger and crew names, the present summary relies on those compiled references and does not reproduce every individual name here — readers seeking a complete name-by-name manifest should consult the archival victim lists and legacy memorial pages cited [4] [5].