[KJC1]

Why didn't they ask for help getting "unlost?"

ALL eleven of them, split up, and not ONE of them did this?

No, I do not believe that for one minute.

[muawiyah]

Not all eleven of them split up. Some posters here see a "pairs" pattern. I see singles, doubles and triples. For the most part I see kids going outside, finding a cabdriver who speaks Arabic (who could be from a Moslem but not Arabic speaking country ~ knowing Classical Arabic to read the Koran) and being handled charitably.

Maybe some were taken to a nearby mosque. Others were probably dropped at relatives, or, if the kid had a relative, the cabdriver may have taken them all the way to that location. Others were helped to get a different flight somewhere.

No wonder the FBI doesn't see anything sinister in this.

Fur Shur there are ticket agents at airports who do remember dealing with a young Arabic speaking individual who needed the help of an interpreter who didn't understand the student all that well.

No doubt both the helpers and the ticket agents had difficulty buying into the idea that the kid really did want to go to Montana~!!!

[AmericanInTokyo]

I did precisely that, as I was a 'foreign student' at one time in my lief, however I DID show up at my place of instruction, according to my visa instructions and registration procedures.

So, to theorize a bit more about this, I put myself in their shoes. If I entered a country with other Americans on the same flight for the same school in a remote part of the country, and then I went off on my own while others went all kinds of other directions, and I did not ask for the slightest help to get me oriented back to my approved destination, I would be harboring nothing but a nefarious intent.

And that is what each of these 11 young men did.

I doubt they are upstanding young people. And I strongly suspect they had other operational plans, and are part of a terror or testing (dry run) network, being run out of Egypt and in concert with al-Qaeda, or some other radical islamic group.