Posted on 08/29/2002 1:41:13 PM PDT by DrLiberty
How 'bout we get back on the subject? So, why do you think the crew didn't contact ground control? Whoever wrote this must have been up for 72 hours - they wouldn't contact ground control - it would be air traffic control.
And why didn't they dial in the hijack code into the transponder? Oh yes. They were DEAD.
I haven't seen any acknowledgement of this in your responses here.
Relax, Doc. I'm not nearly that organized. Truth be told, I hadn't noticed that you were called a name first. I skimmed through some of the messages until I got to something addressing the aviation inaccuracies here. I'm not all that interested in backbiting - it's too time-consuming.
Well, I'm trying to get some work done here, but here are a couple of references. Otherwise, you may prove they weren't. This is your thread, and the burden of proof is on you.
Link: http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:oA_-nRK5rHUC:www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551070,00.html+flight+93+passenger+manifest&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles / Thursday September 13, 2001 The Guardian
START EXCERPT: Bolded segments my emphasis:
"The hijackers had apparently armed themselves not with any weapons that could have been spotted by metal detectors or security checks at the airports but with the kind of self-made weapons used by prisoners: razors embedded in plastic, plastic knives, cardboard cutters and Stanley knives. They could have been smuggled on board in their hand luggage.
Already US airports have announced that all knives, whether plastic or metal, will be banned from airport complexes. Cafes and restaurants have been asked to remove them from service.
The attorney general, John Ashcroft, told a press conference last night that the hijack teams appeared to have consisted of between three and six people each, and that the pilots in the teams had all been trained in the US. They had overpowered the airline crews with makeshift weapons and with bomb threats, he said.
Flying video
Two of the suspects were brothers with passports traced to the United Arab Emirates, according to the Boston Herald. The Boston Globe reported that one suspect's luggage did not make the connection. That bag contained a Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator, the newspaper said.
The FBI has even taken the chairs the suspects may have used while waiting to board the flights as part of its forensic investigation.
The hijackers perhaps came together from different parts of the US. orida, law enforcement officials said they had identified a person suspected of being a hijacker and a possible associate of Osama bin Laden on the passenger manifest of one of the four downed planes.
END EXCERPT
You can't check luggage unless you have a ticket to board the flight. You can't get into the waiting area without a ticket. If you have a ticket, you're on the passenger manifest.
If you refuse to accept this line of reasoning, how do you explain how each of the hijackers were identified?
Another link: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attack/Plane_casualties
"265 people killed on four planes; 232 passengers, 25 flight attendants, 8 pilots. (Note that this total includes 19 hijackers, who reportedly boarded the planes as passengers.)
This page contains a full manifest of each flight, including each hijacker. The above page contains more details on the hijackers.
Widely reported accounts also detail the flight attendant identifying the seat that one hijacker had been sitting in - she was speaking with her airline base, thinking clearly enough to do so, in order to get an ID on one hijacker.
Because the manifests available to the flight crew was not edited in any way, the flight attendant would have the name of each hijacker. Read more:
***
Here's more: http://www.marsearthconnection.com/manifests.html
Re: The Confusion Over the Missing Names on Passenger Manifests
There seems to be some confusion as to why the hijackers names don't appear on the passenger manifests. There are several theories floating around, one being that they weren't on the planes, at all. I had seen the original and complete passenger manifests, several weeks ago, before the hijackers names had been removed so I knew they were included. I wanted to find out why they'd been removed so I did a bit of checking.
I, also, found the complete passenger manifest, which includes the hijackers names...
I found references regarding the fact that there had been a complete list with their names on it, at one time. It came out on the 13th of September and The Boston Globe reported having it..they, too, have since removed the hijackers names. They do state, however, that it is a 'partial list'..."Partial lists of those killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to family members, friends, co-workers and law enforcement."
I received the following email, with an explanation as to why the names had been removed...
Email - Dated: 01-11-03 17:15:55 EST
Re: passenger lists
"I have heard that these names were purposely removed because having them mixed with the victims would have caused great emotional distress for the victims' friends and families. Almost as if the innocent dead were being further damaged by having the perpetrators' names listed along with theirs."
"The Boston Globe reported on its website Thursday [September 13] that it had obtained a copy of the complete manifest list of the planes hijacked from Boston.
The Globe said according to the manifest, Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected terrorists, was assigned seat 8D in business class on American Airlines Flight 11, directly across the aisle from Hollywood producer David Angell and his wife, Lynn, who were in seats 8A and 8B, respectively. Seated next to Atta in seat 8G was Abdul Alomari. FBI investigators have searched Alomari’s home in Vero Beach.
The Globe reported the passenger list for United Air Lines Flight 175 shows that Marwan Alshehri got on the plane that left Boston and slammed into one of the Manhattan skyscrapers 15 minutes after Flight 11. An FAA pilot directory information spelled his name Marwan Alshehhi..."
"The passenger manifest showed that Atta, a pilot, was on board American Airlines Flight 11, the first of two to hit the World Trade Center on September 11."
***
I think I've spent enough time on research here. If you have the time, enter "Flight 11 175 93 77 passenger manifest" in Google, and read away.
Not really. Once your throat is cut, dialing in the hijack code, which takes time, is low on the list. They have to dial in and change four digits on the transponder. It not not an instantaneous action. There is no big red panic button. There is a natural delay in reaction when something out of the ordinary happens in the cockpit - even when the engine quits or when you fly into a cloud when you weren't planning on it (for the private pilot).
So tell me, do you threaten just anyone with abuse after just skimming the previous posts?
No I don't. Do a search on my name, and I don't think you'll find anything in the six months where I have done so.
So, what do you think happened? You stated that this article didn't necessarily reflect your opinions.
So, can we all take a breath now? I don't know if you took the time to search for posts threatening abuse on me, but you may take my word for it that's not my style. I'm not a thread nazi or a grammar nanny (even though I proofread for a living ... I do enough of that during my work day).
I would ask you to heed the information given to you by other pilots on this thread ... some of the suppositions put forward in that article just make no sense at all. They really don't. And I'm no apologist for the FAA, NTSB, or any other alphabet agency. I want ALL the pilots to be armed - today ... no, make that a year ago.
I am certain, however, that Xlinton wantonly ignored national security during the entire eight shameful years that he occupied the White House. I am also certain that had the CIA not been scrubbed for "human rights reasons", we would have had more people on the ground. You can't gather all intelligence electronically, just like you can't fight every war from the air.
It also seems that the various intelligence branches were not only lacking in communication and compilation of intelligence, they were actually in adversarial positions. Even now, it's like watching commencement exercises at a clown college - and they know what they're defending against!
I have a hard time taking this article seriously - which is NOT to say that governments haven't historically acted in a nakedly Machiavellian manner. Just the basic facts don't add up. If you look at the ATC flight tracks of these hijacked flights, they were at times too erratic for remote control to be reasonable.
The hijacker pilots of Flights 11 and 175 nearly collided over Stewart AF Base, on their way towards the Twin Towers. The hijackers of Flight 77 couldn't find the White House (partly because the morning sun was in their eyes), and turned to approach the Pentagon, which is much easier to see.
Well, we may never know. But the mission of the hijackers was to kill the pilots and take control of the plane. They were driven and obsessed maniacs and were not interested in dialogue. Even with ongoing training, the best pilots still have those moments of hesitation, denial, and shock when an emergency is upon them. There was no script for this scenario, and it never goes as smoothly you might think.
I'm out of research time, but I'm sure you can find something that would be more informative about the timelines of the hijackings, and specifically about the takeover of the cockpits.
EMP does exist. However, if a 767 was EMP'd, the effect would be to degrade or destroy the avionics on the aircraft to the point that any effort at remotely flying the aircraft would fail.
The article has numerous technical inaccuracies; this is only one of them.
AWACS aircraft are used as sensor platforms for managing airspace in wartime. The do not have the ability to remotely control aircraft. The most "controlling" aspect of their operations is that intercept controllers on the AWACS talk to interceptor pilots on the radio and tell them where the bad guys are and which way to steer to intercept them.
September 11th was a particularly nice day on the east coast (I was in Washington for a business meeting), so "IFR" (known in the aviation community as "I Follow Roads") would not be necessary. However, the hijackers could crank in GPS coordinates into the navigation system, engage the altitude hold mode on the automatic pilot, and then go to manual control and aim visually as they approached the Trade Center.
This theory gets put up from time to time on FR, and anyone who knows anything about aviation in general and military aviation in particular shoots it down right away.
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