>a group of civilian passengers made more or less the same decision
What decision was this? The decision to sacrifice their own lives, as the fighter pilots were prepared to sacrifice theirs? Because that makes no sense. The passengers were trying to regain control of the aircraft to prevent it from crashing. Likely the hijackers downed the plane rather than relinquish control; the other possibility is that there was a struggle in the cockpit, and the plane crashed accidentally. What almost certainly did not happen was a passenger obtained full control of the aircraft, and intentionally flew it into the ground.
considering all the passengers are dead, you can't make that claim. We'd all love to believe the passengers were selfless, and it definitely made for a great movie, but pretending like we knew what their intentions were is disingenuous at best.
I don't think there's anything disingenuous or speculative in what I'm saying. I'm being very general and going by the article's phone call information (I haven't seen that movie).
Both the passengers and the fighter pilots were willing to do whatever it took to prevent the plane being used to kill a lot more people on the ground. The passengers' phone calls in the article suggest they knew they were likely to die whether acting or not, and as it happened they acted before the fighters could intercept. The article includes conversation of the hijackers in the cockpit deciding to take the plane down before the passengers could get control back.