Ziad Jarrah, the hijacker pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, takes the first of five foreign trips while he is in the United States in preparation for the 9/11 attacks.
He flies from Atlanta to Frankfurt, Germany and then travels on to Bochum, Germany, where he sees his common-law wife Aysel Senguen. The two then travel to Paris for a vacation.
Jarrah, the only Lebanese of the 9/11 hijackers, is also the most cosmopolitan of the 19 men, maintaining a close relationship with a woman, going on vacations, traveling the world. While in the United States, Jarrah makes hundreds of phone calls to Senguen and communicates frequently by email. (911 Commission, p. 224)
During this trip, the Navy destroyer USS Cole is attacked (on October 12) and Mohammed Atta, the leader of the terrorists, was concerned that Jarrah would be stranded overseas when U.S. immigration tightened with the al Qaeda attack.
But when Jarrah returns to the U.S. on October 29, he has no trouble passing through immigration and customs in Tampa, being admitted on a six-month tourist visa, even though he was still in flight school.