I don't mean to be a provocateur, here, and I hope no one will take this as being somehow disrespectful or unpatriotic, but a question keeps knocking around in my brain about this. I admit, I haven't seen the movie and only know as much about what happened on that specific flight as was reported in the media in and around the time. But... Is it possible that the innate, primal urge you speak of, RT, is the drive to survive? When my husband and I have talked about this, his being a pilot and all especially, he's said that if he were on that flight as a passenger, sure as shit he'd try to take over the flight, not specifically to try to save people on the ground, but to try to save everyone on that plane. I've always looked at it like they knew from people on their cell phones what had already happened, and so they knew they were going to crash. My innate drive, I think, would have been first and foremost not to.
Again, I don't mean to take away from their heroism - in fact I mean to add to it, because I think it's still incredibly brave to take that chance rather than to just sit there and cry and let someone else determine your fate.