Flight 93 National Memorial, Stoystown, Pennsylvania

On 11 September 2001, forty passengers and crew aboard United Flight 93 forced their way toward the cockpit of a hijacked aircraft and brought it down in a Somerset County field rather than at its intended target in Washington. The memorial built on that field is quiet, deliberate and unusually affecting. A charter bus to the Flight 93 National Memorial is how most school and civic groups reach it, because the site sits well away from any town.

What is on the site

• The Visitor Center Complex, with an exhibition covering the day itself, the passengers and crew, and the response. Allow an hour; it is the part groups underestimate.
• The Memorial Plaza and the Wall of Names, forty inscribed marble panels standing along the flight path, at the edge of the impact site.
• The boulder marking the impact point, visible from the plaza in a field that is otherwise left alone.
• The Tower of Voices, a 93-foot tower holding forty wind chimes, each with a distinct tone. It stands near the park entrance and is worth stopping at on the way in rather than on the way out.

Admission is free — it is a National Park Service site. The walk from the Visitor Center down to the Memorial Plaza is a paved, gently sloping path of about a third of a mile, and there is separate parking at the plaza for anyone who cannot manage it.

Preparing a group, particularly a school group

This is a place where people died, and it is treated as such. Students born long after 2001 have no memory of the day and will take their cue entirely from how the visit is framed. A short briefing on the coach before arrival — what happened, why the site is quiet, what is expected — does more for the visit than anything the exhibition can do afterwards.

Rangers offer talks at the Memorial Plaza and can arrange programs for school groups if you contact the park in advance. It is free and it is substantially better than walking the site unguided.

Which charter bus suits the visit

• Forty to fifty-six: a full-size charter bus is the standard vehicle, and there is designated bus parking at both the Visitor Center and the plaza.
• Twenty to thirty-two: a mini bus suits a smaller class, a historical society or a veterans' group.
• Twenty-eight to sixty: a school bus works for districts within about two hours.

Our school trip transportation quotes carry the insurance documentation districts require, and we handle a steady volume of civic and veterans' group travel to this site each year.

Getting there and how long to allow

The memorial is near Stoystown in rural Somerset County, roughly ninety minutes east of Pittsburgh and about two and a half hours west of Harrisburg. We run pickups from Somerset, Johnstown, Pittsburgh and Altoona.

Allow two and a half to three hours on site. Groups searching for charter bus rental near me for a memorial visit frequently budget an hour and then find themselves rushing the exhibition, which is the part of the visit that does the explaining. There is very little nearby in the way of food, so plan lunch either before you arrive or on the road afterwards.