The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of the popular series The X-Files, was a television show that aired on FOX, featuring the characters of the same name. The show first aired in March 2001 and, despite good reviews, was cancelled due to a drop in ratings.^[1] The last episode aired in June 2001.

The debut of the show in March of 2001, began with Byers' father faking his death to uncover a conspiracy to hijack an airliner. The lone gunmen try to get to the truth of his supposed death and uncover the conspiracy.

One retrospectively interesting aspect of this pilot episode is that the airliner has been hijacked (via remote control of the plane's autopilot) and, by the end, both Byers and his father have boarded the plane to try to stop the hijacking. Through the aid of the other Gunmen, they are able to regain control of the plane and just miss crashing into the World Trade Center with the airliner. This, of course, is before the actual attack against the Trade Centers later that year.

 This was an unintentional foreshadowing of the September 11, 2001 attacks.  The plot of the March 4, 2001 pilot episode of the series depicted a secret U.S. government agency plotting to crash a Boeing 727 headed for Boston into the World Trade Center via remote control for the purpose of increasing the military defense budget and blaming the attack on foreign "tin-pot dictators" who are "begging to be smart-bombed." This episode was broadcast in Australia on August 30, less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks.[2]