Bob Gardner
February 21st 06, 08:32 PM
I have had the opportunity to fly both 737 and 747 simulators at the Boeing
Training Center and at Flight Safety. I have had no training in the
operation of heavy jets...I just applied the knowledge I had gained from
flying cabin twins. In these full-motion sims I have flown patterns to
ILS's. I have no problem with the possibility of the hijackers being able to
do what they obviously did.
Bob Gardner
"TRUTH" > wrote in message
...
> http://physics911.net/sagadevan.htm
>
>
>
> The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training
> by Nila Sagadevan
>
> Nila Sagadevan is an aeronautical engineer and a qualified pilot of heavy
> aircraft.
>
> There are some who maintain that the mythical 9/11 hijackers, although
> proven to be too incompetent to fly a little Cessna 172, had acquired the
> impressive skills that enabled them to fly airliners by training in
> flight simulators.
>
> What follows is an attempt to bury this myth once and for all, because
> I've heard this ludicrous explanation bandied about, ad nauseam, on the
> Internet and the TV networks-invariably by people who know nothing
> substantive about flight simulators, flying, or even airplanes.
>
> A common misconception non-pilots have about simulators is how "easy" it
> is to operate them. They are indeed relatively easy to operate if the
> objective is to make a few lazy turns and frolic about in the "open sky".
> But if the intent is to execute any kind of a maneuver with even the
> least bit of precision, the task immediately becomes quite daunting. And
> if the aim is to navigate to a specific geographic location hundreds of
> miles away while flying at over 500 MPH, 30,000 feet above the ground the
> challenges become virtually impossible for an untrained pilot.
>
> And this, precisely, is what the four hijacker pilots who could not fly a
> Cessna around an airport are alleged to have accomplished in multi-ton,
> high-speed commercial jets on 9/11.
>
> For a person not conversant with the practical complexities of pilotage,
> a modern flight simulator could present a terribly confusing and
> disorienting experience. These complex training devices are not even
> remotely similar to the video games one sees in amusement arcades, or
> even the software versions available for home computers.
>
> In order to operate a modern flight simulator with any level of skill,
> one has to not only be a decent pilot to begin with, but also a skilled
> instrument-rated one to boot - and be thoroughly familiar with the actual
> aircraft type the simulator represents, since the cockpit layouts vary
> between aircraft.
>
> The only flight domains where an arcade/PC-type game would even begin to
> approach the degree of visual realism of a modern professional flight
> simulator would be during the take-off and landing phases. During these
> phases, of course, one clearly sees the bright runway lights stretched
> out ahead, and even peripherally sees images of buildings, etc. moving
> past. Take-offs-even landings, to a certain degree-are relatively "easy",
> because the pilot has visual reference cues that exist "outside" the
> cockpit.
>
> But once you've rotated, climbed out, and reached cruising altitude in a
> simulator (or real airplane), and find yourself en route to some distant
> destination (using sophisticated electronic navigation techniques), the
> situation changes drastically: the pilot loses virtually all external
> visual reference cues. S/he is left entirely at the mercy of an array of
> complex flight and navigation instruments to provide situational cues
> (altitude, heading, speed, attitude, etc.)
>
> In the case of a Boeing 757 or 767, the pilot would be faced with an EFIS
> (Electronic Flight Instrumentation System) panel comprised of six large
> multi-mode LCDs interspersed with clusters of assorted "hard"
> instruments. These displays process the raw aircraft system and flight
> data into an integrated picture of the aircraft situation, position and
> progress, not only in horizontal and vertical dimensions, but also with
> regard to time and speed as well. When flying "blind", I.e., with no
> ground reference cues, it takes a highly skilled pilot to interpret, and
> then apply, this data intelligently. If one cannot translate this
> information quickly, precisely and accurately (and it takes an
> instrument-rated pilot to do so), one would have ZERO SITUATIONAL
> AWARENESS. I.e., the pilot wouldn't have a clue where s/he was in
> relation to the earth. Flight under such conditions is referred to as
> "IFR", or Instrument Flight Rules.
>
> And IFR Rule #1: Never take your eyes off your instruments, because
> that's all you have!
>
> The corollary to Rule #1: If you can't read the instruments in a quick,
> smooth, disciplined, scan, you're as good as dead. Accident records from
> around the world are replete with reports of any number of good pilots -
> I.e., professional instrument-rated pilots - who 'bought the farm'
> because they screwed up while flying in IFR conditions.
>
> Let me place this in the context of the 9/11 hijacker-pilots. These men
> were repeatedly deemed incompetent to solo a simple Cessna-172 - an
> elementary exercise that involves flying this little trainer once around
> the patch on a sunny day. A student's first solo flight involves a simple
> circuit: take-off, followed by four gentle left turns ending with a
> landing back on the runway. This is as basic as flying can possibly get.
>
> Not one of the hijackers was deemed fit to perform this most elementary
> exercise by himself.
>
> In fact, here's what their flight instructors had to say about the
> aptitude of these budding aviators:
>
> Mohammed Atta: "His attention span was zero."
>
> Khalid Al-Mihdhar: "We didn't kick him out, but he didn't live up to our
> standards."
>
> Marwan Al-Shehhi: "He was dropped because of his limited English and
> incompetence at the controls."
>
> Salem Al-Hazmi: "We advised him to quit after two lessons."
>
> Hani Hanjour: "His English was horrible, and his mechanical skills were
> even worse. It was like he had hardly even ever driven a car. I'm still
> to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could
> not fly at all."
>
> Now let's take a look at American Airlines Flight 77. Passenger/hijacker
> Hani Hanjour rises from his seat midway through the flight, viciously
> fights his way into the cockpit with his cohorts, overpowers Captain
> Charles F. Burlingame and First Officer David Charlebois, and somehow
> manages to toss them out of the cockpit (for starters, very difficult to
> achieve in a cramped environment without inadvertently impacting the yoke
> and thereby disengaging the autopilot). One would correctly presume that
> this would present considerable difficulties to a little guy with a box
> cutter-Burlingame was a tough, burly, ex-Vietnam F4 fighter jock who had
> flown over 100 combat missions. Every pilot who knows him says that
> rather than politely hand over the controls, Burlingame would have
> instantly rolled the plane on its back so that Hanjour would have broken
> his neck when he hit the floor. But let's ignore this almost natural
> reaction expected of a fighter pilot and proceed with this charade.
>
> Nonetheless, imagine that Hanjour overpowers the flight deck crew,
> removes them from the cockpit and takes his position in the captain's
> seat. Although weather reports state this was not the case, let's say
> Hanjour was lucky enough to experience a perfect CAVU day (Ceiling And
> Visibility Unlimited). If Hanjour looked straight ahead through the
> windshield, or off to his left at the ground, at best he would see,
> 35,000 feet -- 7 miles -- below him, a murky brownish-grey-green
> landscape, virtually devoid of surface detail, while the aircraft he was
> now piloting was moving along, almost imperceptibly and in eerie silence,
> at around 500 MPH (about 750 feet every second).
>
> In a real-world scenario (and given the reported weather conditions that
> day), he would likely have seen clouds below him completely obscuring the
> ground he was traversing. With this kind of "situational non-awareness",
> Hanjour might as well have been flying over Argentina, Russia, or
> Japan-he wouldn't have had a clue as to where, precisely, he was.
>
> After a few seconds (at 750 ft/sec), Hanjour would figure out there's
> little point in looking outside-there's nothing there to give him any
> real visual cues. For a man who had previously wrestled with little
> Cessnas, following freeways and railroad tracks (and always in the
> comforting presence of an instructor), this would have been a strange,
> eerily unsettling environment indeed.
>
> Seeing nothing outside, Mr. Hanjour would be forced to divert his
> attention to his instrument panel, where he'd be faced with a bewildering
> array of instruments. He would then have to very quickly interpret his
> heading, ground track, altitude, and airspeed information on the displays
> before he could even figure out where in the world he was, much less
> where the Pentagon was located in relation to his position!
>
> After all, before he can crash into a target, he has to first find the
> target.
>
> It is very difficult to explain this scenario, of an utter lack of ground
> reference, to non-pilots; but let it suffice to say that for these
> incompetent hijacker non-pilots to even consider grappling with such a
> daunting task would have been utterly overwhelming. They wouldn't have
> known where to begin.
>
> But, for the sake of discussion let's stretch things beyond all
> plausibility and say that Hanjour-whose flight instructor claimed
> "couldn't fly at all"-somehow managed to figure out their exact position
> on the American landscape in relation to their intended target as they
> traversed the earth at a speed five times faster than they had ever flown
> by themselves before.
>
> Once he had determined exactly where he was, he would need to figure out
> where the Pentagon was located in relation to his rapidly-changing
> position. He would then need to plot a course to his target (one he
> cannot see with his eyes-remember, our ace is flying solely on
> instruments).
>
> In order to perform this bit of electronic navigation, he would have to
> be very familiar with IFR procedures. None of these chaps even knew what
> a navigational chart looked like, much less how to how to plug
> information into flight management computers (FMC) and engage LNAV
> (lateral navigation automated mode). If one is to believe the official
> story, all of this was supposedly accomplished by raw student pilots
> while flying blind at 500 MPH over unfamiliar (and practically invisible)
> terrain, using complex methodologies and employing sophisticated
> instruments.
>
> To get around this little problem, the official storyline suggests these
> men manually flew their aircraft to their respective targets (NB: This
> still wouldn't relieve them of the burden of navigation). But let's
> assume Hanjour disengaged the autopilot and auto-throttle and hand-flew
> the aircraft to its intended-and invisible-target on instruments alone
> until such time as he could get a visual fix. This would have
> necessitated him to fly back across West Virginia and Virginia to
> Washington DC. (This portion of Flight 77's flight path cannot be
> corroborated by any radar evidence that exists, because the aircraft is
> said to have suddenly disappeared from radar screens over Ohio, but let's
> not mull over that little point.)
>
> According to FAA radar controllers, "Flight 77" then suddenly pops up
> over Washington DC and executes an incredibly precise diving turn at a
> rate of 360 degrees/minute while descending at 3,500 ft/min, at the end
> of which "Hanjour" allegedly levels out at ground level. Oh, I almost
> forgot: He also had the presence of mind to turn off the transponder in
> the middle of this incredibly difficult maneuver (one of his instructors
> later commented the hapless fellow couldn't have spelt the word if his
> life depended on it).
>
> The maneuver was in fact so precisely executed that the air traffic
> controllers at Dulles refused to believe the blip on their screen was a
> commercial airliner. Danielle O'Brian, one of the air traffic controllers
> at Dulles who reported seeing the aircraft at 9:25 said, "The speed, the
> maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar
> room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a
> military plane."
>
> And then, all of a sudden we have magic. Voila! Hanjour finds the
> Pentagon sitting squarely in his sights right before him.
>
> But even that wasn't good enough for this fanatic Muslim kamikaze pilot.
> You see, he found that his "missile" was heading towards one of the most
> densely populated wings of the Pentagon-and one occupied by top military
> brass, including the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld. Presumably in order
> to save these men's lives, he then executes a sweeping 270-degree turn
> and approaches the building from the opposite direction and aligns
> himself with the only wing of the Pentagon that was virtually uninhabited
> due to extensive renovations that were underway (there were some 120
> civilians construction workers in that wing who were killed; their work
> included blast-proofing the outside wall of that wing).
>
> I shan't get into the aerodynamic impossibility of flying a large
> commercial jetliner 20 feet above the ground at over 400 MPH. A
> discussion on ground effect energy, tip vortex compression, downwash
> sheet reaction, wake turbulence, and jetblast effects are beyond the
> scope of this article (the 100,000-lb jetblast alone would have blown
> whole semi-trucks off the roads.)
>
> Let it suffice to say that it is physically impossible to fly a 200,000-
> lb airliner 20 feet above the ground at 400 MPH.
>
> The author, a pilot and aeronautical engineer, challenges any pilot in
> the world to do so in any large high-speed aircraft that has a relatively
> low wing-loading (such as a commercial jet). I.e., to fly the craft at
> 400 MPH, 20 feet above ground in a flat trajectory over a distance of one
> mile.
>
> Why the stipulation of 20 feet and a mile? There were several street
> light poles located up to a mile away from the Pentagon that were
> snapped-off by the incoming aircraft; this suggests a low, flat
> trajectory during the final pre-impact approach phase. Further, it is
> known that the craft impacted the Pentagon's ground floor. For purposes
> of reference: If a 757 were placed on the ground on its engine nacelles
> (I.e., gear retracted as in flight profile), its nose would be almost 20
> above the ground! Ergo, for the aircraft to impact the ground floor of
> the Pentagon, Hanjour would have needed to have flown in with the engines
> buried 10-feet deep in the Pentagon lawn. Some pilot.
>
> At any rate, why is such ultra-low-level flight aerodynamically
> impossible? Because the reactive force of the hugely powerful downwash
> sheet, coupled with the compressibility effects of the tip vortices,
> simply will not allow the aircraft to get any lower to the ground than
> approximately one half the distance of its wingspan-until speed is
> drastically reduced, which, of course, is what happens during normal
> landings.
>
> In other words, if this were a Boeing 757 as reported, the plane could
> not have been flown below about 60 feet above ground at 400 MPH. (Such a
> maneuver is entirely within the performance envelope of aircraft with
> high wing-loadings, such as ground-attack fighters, the B1-B bomber, and
> Cruise missiles-and the Global Hawk.)
>
> The very same navigational challenges mentioned above would have faced
> the pilots who flew the two 767s into the Twin Towers, in that they, too,
> would have had to have first found their targets. Again, these chaps,
> too, miraculously found themselves spot on course. And again, their
> "final approach" maneuvers at over 500 MPH are simply far too incredible
> to have been executed by pilots who could not solo basic training
> aircraft.
>
> Conclusion
> The writers of the official storyline expect us to believe, that once the
> flight deck crews had been overpowered, and the hijackers "took control"
> of the various aircraft, their intended targets suddenly popped up in
> their windshields as they would have in some arcade game, and all that
> these fellows would have had to do was simply aim their airplanes at the
> buildings and fly into them. Most people who have been exposed only to
> the official storyline have never been on the flight deck of an airliner
> at altitude and looked at the outside world; if they had, they'd realize
> the absurdity of this kind of reasoning.
>
> In reality, a clueless non-pilot would encounter almost insurmountable
> difficulties in attempting to navigate and fly a 200,000-lb airliner into
> a building located on the ground, 7 miles below and hundreds of miles
> away and out of sight, and in an unknown direction, while flying at over
> 500 MPH - and all this under extremely stressful circumstances.
Training Center and at Flight Safety. I have had no training in the
operation of heavy jets...I just applied the knowledge I had gained from
flying cabin twins. In these full-motion sims I have flown patterns to
ILS's. I have no problem with the possibility of the hijackers being able to
do what they obviously did.
Bob Gardner
"TRUTH" > wrote in message
...
> http://physics911.net/sagadevan.htm
>
>
>
> The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training
> by Nila Sagadevan
>
> Nila Sagadevan is an aeronautical engineer and a qualified pilot of heavy
> aircraft.
>
> There are some who maintain that the mythical 9/11 hijackers, although
> proven to be too incompetent to fly a little Cessna 172, had acquired the
> impressive skills that enabled them to fly airliners by training in
> flight simulators.
>
> What follows is an attempt to bury this myth once and for all, because
> I've heard this ludicrous explanation bandied about, ad nauseam, on the
> Internet and the TV networks-invariably by people who know nothing
> substantive about flight simulators, flying, or even airplanes.
>
> A common misconception non-pilots have about simulators is how "easy" it
> is to operate them. They are indeed relatively easy to operate if the
> objective is to make a few lazy turns and frolic about in the "open sky".
> But if the intent is to execute any kind of a maneuver with even the
> least bit of precision, the task immediately becomes quite daunting. And
> if the aim is to navigate to a specific geographic location hundreds of
> miles away while flying at over 500 MPH, 30,000 feet above the ground the
> challenges become virtually impossible for an untrained pilot.
>
> And this, precisely, is what the four hijacker pilots who could not fly a
> Cessna around an airport are alleged to have accomplished in multi-ton,
> high-speed commercial jets on 9/11.
>
> For a person not conversant with the practical complexities of pilotage,
> a modern flight simulator could present a terribly confusing and
> disorienting experience. These complex training devices are not even
> remotely similar to the video games one sees in amusement arcades, or
> even the software versions available for home computers.
>
> In order to operate a modern flight simulator with any level of skill,
> one has to not only be a decent pilot to begin with, but also a skilled
> instrument-rated one to boot - and be thoroughly familiar with the actual
> aircraft type the simulator represents, since the cockpit layouts vary
> between aircraft.
>
> The only flight domains where an arcade/PC-type game would even begin to
> approach the degree of visual realism of a modern professional flight
> simulator would be during the take-off and landing phases. During these
> phases, of course, one clearly sees the bright runway lights stretched
> out ahead, and even peripherally sees images of buildings, etc. moving
> past. Take-offs-even landings, to a certain degree-are relatively "easy",
> because the pilot has visual reference cues that exist "outside" the
> cockpit.
>
> But once you've rotated, climbed out, and reached cruising altitude in a
> simulator (or real airplane), and find yourself en route to some distant
> destination (using sophisticated electronic navigation techniques), the
> situation changes drastically: the pilot loses virtually all external
> visual reference cues. S/he is left entirely at the mercy of an array of
> complex flight and navigation instruments to provide situational cues
> (altitude, heading, speed, attitude, etc.)
>
> In the case of a Boeing 757 or 767, the pilot would be faced with an EFIS
> (Electronic Flight Instrumentation System) panel comprised of six large
> multi-mode LCDs interspersed with clusters of assorted "hard"
> instruments. These displays process the raw aircraft system and flight
> data into an integrated picture of the aircraft situation, position and
> progress, not only in horizontal and vertical dimensions, but also with
> regard to time and speed as well. When flying "blind", I.e., with no
> ground reference cues, it takes a highly skilled pilot to interpret, and
> then apply, this data intelligently. If one cannot translate this
> information quickly, precisely and accurately (and it takes an
> instrument-rated pilot to do so), one would have ZERO SITUATIONAL
> AWARENESS. I.e., the pilot wouldn't have a clue where s/he was in
> relation to the earth. Flight under such conditions is referred to as
> "IFR", or Instrument Flight Rules.
>
> And IFR Rule #1: Never take your eyes off your instruments, because
> that's all you have!
>
> The corollary to Rule #1: If you can't read the instruments in a quick,
> smooth, disciplined, scan, you're as good as dead. Accident records from
> around the world are replete with reports of any number of good pilots -
> I.e., professional instrument-rated pilots - who 'bought the farm'
> because they screwed up while flying in IFR conditions.
>
> Let me place this in the context of the 9/11 hijacker-pilots. These men
> were repeatedly deemed incompetent to solo a simple Cessna-172 - an
> elementary exercise that involves flying this little trainer once around
> the patch on a sunny day. A student's first solo flight involves a simple
> circuit: take-off, followed by four gentle left turns ending with a
> landing back on the runway. This is as basic as flying can possibly get.
>
> Not one of the hijackers was deemed fit to perform this most elementary
> exercise by himself.
>
> In fact, here's what their flight instructors had to say about the
> aptitude of these budding aviators:
>
> Mohammed Atta: "His attention span was zero."
>
> Khalid Al-Mihdhar: "We didn't kick him out, but he didn't live up to our
> standards."
>
> Marwan Al-Shehhi: "He was dropped because of his limited English and
> incompetence at the controls."
>
> Salem Al-Hazmi: "We advised him to quit after two lessons."
>
> Hani Hanjour: "His English was horrible, and his mechanical skills were
> even worse. It was like he had hardly even ever driven a car. I'm still
> to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could
> not fly at all."
>
> Now let's take a look at American Airlines Flight 77. Passenger/hijacker
> Hani Hanjour rises from his seat midway through the flight, viciously
> fights his way into the cockpit with his cohorts, overpowers Captain
> Charles F. Burlingame and First Officer David Charlebois, and somehow
> manages to toss them out of the cockpit (for starters, very difficult to
> achieve in a cramped environment without inadvertently impacting the yoke
> and thereby disengaging the autopilot). One would correctly presume that
> this would present considerable difficulties to a little guy with a box
> cutter-Burlingame was a tough, burly, ex-Vietnam F4 fighter jock who had
> flown over 100 combat missions. Every pilot who knows him says that
> rather than politely hand over the controls, Burlingame would have
> instantly rolled the plane on its back so that Hanjour would have broken
> his neck when he hit the floor. But let's ignore this almost natural
> reaction expected of a fighter pilot and proceed with this charade.
>
> Nonetheless, imagine that Hanjour overpowers the flight deck crew,
> removes them from the cockpit and takes his position in the captain's
> seat. Although weather reports state this was not the case, let's say
> Hanjour was lucky enough to experience a perfect CAVU day (Ceiling And
> Visibility Unlimited). If Hanjour looked straight ahead through the
> windshield, or off to his left at the ground, at best he would see,
> 35,000 feet -- 7 miles -- below him, a murky brownish-grey-green
> landscape, virtually devoid of surface detail, while the aircraft he was
> now piloting was moving along, almost imperceptibly and in eerie silence,
> at around 500 MPH (about 750 feet every second).
>
> In a real-world scenario (and given the reported weather conditions that
> day), he would likely have seen clouds below him completely obscuring the
> ground he was traversing. With this kind of "situational non-awareness",
> Hanjour might as well have been flying over Argentina, Russia, or
> Japan-he wouldn't have had a clue as to where, precisely, he was.
>
> After a few seconds (at 750 ft/sec), Hanjour would figure out there's
> little point in looking outside-there's nothing there to give him any
> real visual cues. For a man who had previously wrestled with little
> Cessnas, following freeways and railroad tracks (and always in the
> comforting presence of an instructor), this would have been a strange,
> eerily unsettling environment indeed.
>
> Seeing nothing outside, Mr. Hanjour would be forced to divert his
> attention to his instrument panel, where he'd be faced with a bewildering
> array of instruments. He would then have to very quickly interpret his
> heading, ground track, altitude, and airspeed information on the displays
> before he could even figure out where in the world he was, much less
> where the Pentagon was located in relation to his position!
>
> After all, before he can crash into a target, he has to first find the
> target.
>
> It is very difficult to explain this scenario, of an utter lack of ground
> reference, to non-pilots; but let it suffice to say that for these
> incompetent hijacker non-pilots to even consider grappling with such a
> daunting task would have been utterly overwhelming. They wouldn't have
> known where to begin.
>
> But, for the sake of discussion let's stretch things beyond all
> plausibility and say that Hanjour-whose flight instructor claimed
> "couldn't fly at all"-somehow managed to figure out their exact position
> on the American landscape in relation to their intended target as they
> traversed the earth at a speed five times faster than they had ever flown
> by themselves before.
>
> Once he had determined exactly where he was, he would need to figure out
> where the Pentagon was located in relation to his rapidly-changing
> position. He would then need to plot a course to his target (one he
> cannot see with his eyes-remember, our ace is flying solely on
> instruments).
>
> In order to perform this bit of electronic navigation, he would have to
> be very familiar with IFR procedures. None of these chaps even knew what
> a navigational chart looked like, much less how to how to plug
> information into flight management computers (FMC) and engage LNAV
> (lateral navigation automated mode). If one is to believe the official
> story, all of this was supposedly accomplished by raw student pilots
> while flying blind at 500 MPH over unfamiliar (and practically invisible)
> terrain, using complex methodologies and employing sophisticated
> instruments.
>
> To get around this little problem, the official storyline suggests these
> men manually flew their aircraft to their respective targets (NB: This
> still wouldn't relieve them of the burden of navigation). But let's
> assume Hanjour disengaged the autopilot and auto-throttle and hand-flew
> the aircraft to its intended-and invisible-target on instruments alone
> until such time as he could get a visual fix. This would have
> necessitated him to fly back across West Virginia and Virginia to
> Washington DC. (This portion of Flight 77's flight path cannot be
> corroborated by any radar evidence that exists, because the aircraft is
> said to have suddenly disappeared from radar screens over Ohio, but let's
> not mull over that little point.)
>
> According to FAA radar controllers, "Flight 77" then suddenly pops up
> over Washington DC and executes an incredibly precise diving turn at a
> rate of 360 degrees/minute while descending at 3,500 ft/min, at the end
> of which "Hanjour" allegedly levels out at ground level. Oh, I almost
> forgot: He also had the presence of mind to turn off the transponder in
> the middle of this incredibly difficult maneuver (one of his instructors
> later commented the hapless fellow couldn't have spelt the word if his
> life depended on it).
>
> The maneuver was in fact so precisely executed that the air traffic
> controllers at Dulles refused to believe the blip on their screen was a
> commercial airliner. Danielle O'Brian, one of the air traffic controllers
> at Dulles who reported seeing the aircraft at 9:25 said, "The speed, the
> maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar
> room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a
> military plane."
>
> And then, all of a sudden we have magic. Voila! Hanjour finds the
> Pentagon sitting squarely in his sights right before him.
>
> But even that wasn't good enough for this fanatic Muslim kamikaze pilot.
> You see, he found that his "missile" was heading towards one of the most
> densely populated wings of the Pentagon-and one occupied by top military
> brass, including the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld. Presumably in order
> to save these men's lives, he then executes a sweeping 270-degree turn
> and approaches the building from the opposite direction and aligns
> himself with the only wing of the Pentagon that was virtually uninhabited
> due to extensive renovations that were underway (there were some 120
> civilians construction workers in that wing who were killed; their work
> included blast-proofing the outside wall of that wing).
>
> I shan't get into the aerodynamic impossibility of flying a large
> commercial jetliner 20 feet above the ground at over 400 MPH. A
> discussion on ground effect energy, tip vortex compression, downwash
> sheet reaction, wake turbulence, and jetblast effects are beyond the
> scope of this article (the 100,000-lb jetblast alone would have blown
> whole semi-trucks off the roads.)
>
> Let it suffice to say that it is physically impossible to fly a 200,000-
> lb airliner 20 feet above the ground at 400 MPH.
>
> The author, a pilot and aeronautical engineer, challenges any pilot in
> the world to do so in any large high-speed aircraft that has a relatively
> low wing-loading (such as a commercial jet). I.e., to fly the craft at
> 400 MPH, 20 feet above ground in a flat trajectory over a distance of one
> mile.
>
> Why the stipulation of 20 feet and a mile? There were several street
> light poles located up to a mile away from the Pentagon that were
> snapped-off by the incoming aircraft; this suggests a low, flat
> trajectory during the final pre-impact approach phase. Further, it is
> known that the craft impacted the Pentagon's ground floor. For purposes
> of reference: If a 757 were placed on the ground on its engine nacelles
> (I.e., gear retracted as in flight profile), its nose would be almost 20
> above the ground! Ergo, for the aircraft to impact the ground floor of
> the Pentagon, Hanjour would have needed to have flown in with the engines
> buried 10-feet deep in the Pentagon lawn. Some pilot.
>
> At any rate, why is such ultra-low-level flight aerodynamically
> impossible? Because the reactive force of the hugely powerful downwash
> sheet, coupled with the compressibility effects of the tip vortices,
> simply will not allow the aircraft to get any lower to the ground than
> approximately one half the distance of its wingspan-until speed is
> drastically reduced, which, of course, is what happens during normal
> landings.
>
> In other words, if this were a Boeing 757 as reported, the plane could
> not have been flown below about 60 feet above ground at 400 MPH. (Such a
> maneuver is entirely within the performance envelope of aircraft with
> high wing-loadings, such as ground-attack fighters, the B1-B bomber, and
> Cruise missiles-and the Global Hawk.)
>
> The very same navigational challenges mentioned above would have faced
> the pilots who flew the two 767s into the Twin Towers, in that they, too,
> would have had to have first found their targets. Again, these chaps,
> too, miraculously found themselves spot on course. And again, their
> "final approach" maneuvers at over 500 MPH are simply far too incredible
> to have been executed by pilots who could not solo basic training
> aircraft.
>
> Conclusion
> The writers of the official storyline expect us to believe, that once the
> flight deck crews had been overpowered, and the hijackers "took control"
> of the various aircraft, their intended targets suddenly popped up in
> their windshields as they would have in some arcade game, and all that
> these fellows would have had to do was simply aim their airplanes at the
> buildings and fly into them. Most people who have been exposed only to
> the official storyline have never been on the flight deck of an airliner
> at altitude and looked at the outside world; if they had, they'd realize
> the absurdity of this kind of reasoning.
>
> In reality, a clueless non-pilot would encounter almost insurmountable
> difficulties in attempting to navigate and fly a 200,000-lb airliner into
> a building located on the ground, 7 miles below and hundreds of miles
> away and out of sight, and in an unknown direction, while flying at over
> 500 MPH - and all this under extremely stressful circumstances.