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Flight 77 maneuver

George 152 said:
A fact which escapes the nutters.
I'm very proud of my flying skills that allowed me to avoid unwanted contact with the ground
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Unwanted contact with the ground is rather easy once real pilots have taken the aircraft up to cruising altitude for you. After that its mostly a navigation exercise for the 9/11 hijackers. THEIR desired contact with terrestrial objects was such that expert flying skills were not required. Any fool can crash a plane.
 
I can't exactly say the same, given that the one time I flew a full motion flight simulator, I promptly put a DC-10 into Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor :o
 
DGM said:


Now closed, was a fun place in it's day. :)
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I was aware of the airport and its rep.

Was curious about the details of KDLarson's sim flight. If taking off or landing, yeah most, if not all, novices would likely hit something they shouldn't.
Keeping an aircraft from hitting the ground if you take over at 35000 feet is not nearly as great a problem. Some training on controls and instruments and simple maneuvering not a problem either.
On 9/11 though , the hijackers waited for the hard part of their planned flight to be done by the real pilots.
Understandably, landing is perhaps a bit more challenging than take off but the hijackers never planned on "landing". No requirement for flap settings, or lowering landing gear, or changing trim of the aircraft at all. All they needed to do was navigate it towards the intended targets. The three we know for certain are all distinctive and easily recognizable from the air, and LARGE! IMO the fourth target was the enormous domed Capital building.
In the case of the south WTC tower the hijackers even had a plume of smoke originating from a location only a few dozens of feet from his intended target.
 
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It's always worth noting the amount of last-minute adjustments Marwan al-Shehhi had to make in order to hit the second tower, after he completely failed to take the wind direction into account. This despite the fact that the smoke plume from the first hit would've told him which way it was blowing.

jaydeehess said:
Ot take off from.
,,, soooo,,, from what starting height? Takes minutes as opposed to seconds, even to power dive from 35,000 feet. (ok about two minutes at 500 MPH vertical velocity)
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It was set up so we started at the Cheung Chau VOR at the start of the IGS approach to runway 13, so at about 6000'.

Mind you, most of the way we just had to dial in the appropriate headings, altitudes and descent rates on the A/P; where we utterly, utterly failed was when we had to hand-fly the damn thing through the turn to line up with the runway.
 
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KDLarsen said:
It's always worth noting the amount of last-minute adjustments Marwan al-Shehhi had to make in order to hit the second tower, after he completely failed to take the wind direction into account. This despite the fact that the smoke plume from the first hit would've told him which way it was blowing.


It was set up so we started at the Cheung Chau VOR at the start of the IGS approach to runway 13, so at about 6000'.

Mind you, most of the way we just had to dial in the appropriate headings, altitudes and descent rates on the A/P; where we utterly, utterly failed was when we had to hand-fly the damn thing through the turn to line up with the runway.
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That would do it.
 
KDLarsen said:
It's always worth noting the amount of last-minute adjustments Marwan al-Shehhi had to make in order to hit the second tower, after he completely failed to take the wind direction into account. This despite the fact that the smoke plume from the first hit would've told him which way it was blowing.


It was set up so we started at the Cheung Chau VOR at the start of the IGS approach to runway 13, so at about 6000'.

Mind you, most of the way we just had to dial in the appropriate headings, altitudes and descent rates on the A/P; where we utterly, utterly failed was when we had to hand-fly the damn thing through the turn to line up with the runway.
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Yup.
That's the bit where I referred to where the old skills come in.
Clue look for the spot that doesn't move, that's (more or less) where you're headed :)
Go back and knock 'em dead
 
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