New Aidan Monaghan Paper Considers Autopilot Operation

[George 152]

True, but atleast 2 of them thought that they were talking with the passengers when they were transmitting to the control towers. So with that piece of the puzzle, I highly doubt they knew where the autopilot button/switch was.

At their level they had some hours of instrument flying.
Its mandatory. The term autopilot covers a whole raft of systems.

 

[I Ratant]

I'd like to see a more detailed set of graphs of the last few minutes of UAL 175.
Looking at the gross details of the flight path, I see no reason for it to have approached the South Tower in this manner.. I can't get it done without doing damage to the official flight path... which however isn't detailed enough to position the plane within a few miles of the tower.

 

[The Big Dog]

I don't pretend to know how to analyze the particulars, but your insistence that the maneuvers were easy to pull off is basically just bare assertion. I think Monaghan and others are looking at the approach in totality. Consider the bank after this:

I do enjoy the fact that you spam an article you don't understand and then criticize the responses, also which you don't understand.

NIFTY!

 

[RedIbis]

No, it isn't. I have simulated their entire approach myself, including the power dive, and found it to be not difficult at all.

!

On a video game, right?

 

[Oystein]

On a video game, right?

On a flight simulator.
I played it, and it had video. So yes, you can call that a video game.

RedIbis, you forgot a little something - again - and this is so highly typical of you and all truthers:

Several posters, including myself, replied to the OP (yours) and the paper linked to in it. But what did you reply to? My comment on someone else's side remark.

RedIbis, please be so kind and acknowledge and reply to my first post, (post #9)! It addresses YOUR OP and the paper at hand!:

Otherwise I'll go on vacation with the conclusion that you are running away from your own inapt beliefs consciously, probably knowing full well or at least suspecting strongly that you don't present something true in the OP.
This is a sneaky way of being dishonest.


Please defend the OP, or concede it lacks merit.

 

[beachnut]

I don't pretend to know how to analyze the particulars, but your insistence that the maneuvers were easy to pull off is basically just bare assertion. I think Monaghan and others are looking at the approach in totality. Consider the bank after this:

(8:58 a.m.-9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Controllers Watch Flight 175 Descending 10,000 Feet per Minute

Air traffic controllers at the FAA’s New York Center who are watching Flight 175 on the radar screen (see (8:57 a.m.-9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001) see the aircraft descending at an astonishing rate of up to 10,000 feet per minute. [The Learning Channel, 2005] From 8:58 a.m., Flight 175 is constantly descending toward New York. [National Transportation Safety Board, 2/19/2002 ] One of the New York Center controllers, Jim Bohleber, is looking at his radar scope and calls out the plane’s rate of descent every 12 seconds, each time the screen updates, saying: “It’s six thousand feet a minute. Now it’s eight. Now ten.” [Newsday, 9/10/2002; Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006] Dave Bottiglia, the controller responsible for monitoring Flight 175, will later comment that 10,000 feet per minute is “absolutely unheard of for a commercial jet. It is unbelievable for the passengers in the back to withstand that type of force as they’re descending. [The hijackers are] actually nosing the airplane down and doing what I would call a ‘power dive.’” [The Learning Channel, 2005] While Flight 175 is in this rapid descent, it heads directly into the paths of several other aircraft, and narrowly avoids a mid-air collision with flight Midex 7 (see (9:01 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Spencer, 2008, pp. 73-76]


http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timelin...

OH, 10,000 feet per minute? Proves it was a terrorist pilot, first and last flight. Means the idiot pointed the plane toward the ground and descended, Hani decided to do a turn to get down. Flt 175 pilot picked to point at the ground and go real fast, he had no clue he was exceeding the aircraft limits, which are like a speed limit on a road, but so the plane has a long useful life with less stress.

10,000 feet per minute is fast for descent, but I can do over 15,000 feet and stay within limits. Darn, 10,000 feet/min, NOT an issue on 911, just something for you to expose your ignorance on flying.

If you were a pilot or engineer you would realize there is no force on the passengers in a 10,000 foot/min descent, they are protected from air and wind blast by the fuselage, they fell nothing, they might hear a wind rush, more wind noise than usual, if you are good you can hear the same sound when pilots are late and they are speeding go make up time in a 737. You are fooled by TV editors who have no clue, and people talking BS.

Your post only exposes your gullibility and the fact you can't figure out the paper you posted in the OP is moronic nonsense and idiotic speculation of the dumb kind.


FACT, a good pilot can get his plane down at rates equal to or greater than 15,000 feet/min if needed in an emergency (or rates available in type), something ATC does not get to see unless an old tanker pilot is demonstrating an emergency descent in a KC-135. But it would have to be an emergency, the passengers may feel the initial maneuver and the pull out and be upset, but the descent itself if not eventful, no big force on the passengers, that is nonsense you got from a TV show.

On a video game, right?

Now you expose your lack of knowledge on flight simulators, even Microsoft FS. As an engineer and a pilot since 1974, the versions of Microsoft FS I have flown on my personal computers, are equal to real full up simulators. The flight control models, based on the equations of motion for REAL aircraft are found in these "video games". They really fly like real planes, they react like real planes. There are some "games" which are not "real", but you can buy for your computer simulator "games" which have the dynamics of real planes. Not sure if the software companies have changed their fidelity since 911 for legal reasons, but the old software was like the real thing. But you are not a pilot and would not know the some computer "games" actually act like real planes. Darn, more lack of knowledge showing, as you implied when you posted another no comment OP!

I have flown and instructed in real flight simulators for real planes since 1975. I have flown in motion simulators of real jets and future jets using proposed flight control software, one place was NASA Langley, where we compared pitch pointing software to conventional flight controls.

It works this way. If it was too difficult to do it, then on 911 the terrorist pilots would have failed to do it. Reality is really that simple.

 

[WildCat]

I don't pretend to know how to analyze the particulars, but your insistence that the maneuvers were easy to pull off is basically just bare assertion. I think Monaghan and others are looking at the approach in totality. Consider the bank after this:

(8:58 a.m.-9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Controllers Watch Flight 175 Descending 10,000 Feet per Minute

Air traffic controllers at the FAA’s New York Center who are watching Flight 175 on the radar screen (see (8:57 a.m.-9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001) see the aircraft descending at an astonishing rate of up to 10,000 feet per minute. [The Learning Channel, 2005] From 8:58 a.m., Flight 175 is constantly descending toward New York. [National Transportation Safety Board, 2/19/2002 ] One of the New York Center controllers, Jim Bohleber, is looking at his radar scope and calls out the plane’s rate of descent every 12 seconds, each time the screen updates, saying: “It’s six thousand feet a minute. Now it’s eight. Now ten.” [Newsday, 9/10/2002; Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006] Dave Bottiglia, the controller responsible for monitoring Flight 175, will later comment that 10,000 feet per minute is “absolutely unheard of for a commercial jet. It is unbelievable for the passengers in the back to withstand that type of force as they’re descending. [The hijackers are] actually nosing the airplane down and doing what I would call a ‘power dive.’” [The Learning Channel, 2005] While Flight 175 is in this rapid descent, it heads directly into the paths of several other aircraft, and narrowly avoids a mid-air collision with flight Midex 7 (see (9:01 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Spencer, 2008, pp. 73-76]


http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timelin...

Oh dear! I hope they suspend Atta's license over this.

 

[I Ratant]

Looking real closely, I find the terminal manuver of UAL 175 is hidden inside the coarse presentation of the flight path in the official documents.

 

[RedIbis]

Please defend the OP, or concede it lacks merit.

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

 

[9/11 Chewy Defense]

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

So you won't defend the OP?

So that means the R/C Plane theory is just a myth? Should've said that in the first place.

 

[beachnut]

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

How would you know.
1. Are you an engineer?
2. Are you a pilot?
3. Are you obseesed with Gravy?

(RedIbis, on the other hand, exists to me only in quoted form). - Gravy (Mark Roberts)

Using your sig, we find #3 is the winner.

Means you don't know what bare assertions, fallacies, or bluster on the topic would be.

Did you read the paper, it was not only flawed, wrong, it has no conclusion. Flight 175 was hand flown, the max bank angle of the autopilot is 25 degrees, the last bank angle is 38 degrees.

 

[BCR]

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

Okay, a competing analysis. A gang of wacked out Muslim extremists hijacked a plane (UAL 175) and flew it into the WTC.

See how easy that was.

 

[Dave Rogers]

It seems rather obvious that Monaghan is presenting a false trilemma here, backed up by faulty reasoning. He's stating three possible reasons for the final increase in bank angle, and then claiming that the third (manual intervention) is unlikely because the plane was already going to hit without the intervention. It seems to me, firstly, that this is an argument against automated intervention; an automated control system would be able to measure and extrapolate the course of the airliner, and would hence (a) not need to make sudden last-second alterations and (b) be able to calculate that those alterations were not necessary. Secondly, it seems that there are rather more than three possibilities. For example, the pilot may have increased the bank angle at the last moment from a pre-planned intention to cause damage to more floors, may have panicked and lost control, may even have got into a fight for control with one of the other hijackers who had panicked. Most likely, though, it seems to me that the pilot underestimated either the rate of turn or the distance to the tower, and made a last moment overcorrection that wasn't necessary.

In any case, since Monaghan states in his introduction that human control can't be ruled out, and since we can be certain that his personal bias will be towards ruling out human control if at all possible, then there's no reason to read past that statement. If a biased observer can't find enough evidence to support his own bias, we can be fairly certain that an impartial examination will find even less.

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

Then we'll all be interested, now that you've dealt with the urgent business of responding to the bare assertion fallacies and bluster, to see your responses to the competing analyses. At the moment, you seem to be showing very much more interest in the former.

Dave

 

[The Big Dog]

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

What part of the fact that the article linked in the opening post is nothing but bare assertion fallacies and bluster did you fail to undertsand, Red?

No Planers > No claimers like Red.

 

[funk de fino]

No. I presented it and stated right from the get go that I was interested in competing analyses, not bare assertion fallacies and bluster, which is most of what I've read here.

This is what you linked to in your OP. The fact you think it is a credible analysis is not our fault.

 

[TexasJack]

I think the key word everyone is missing is "competing." Since he presented a joke analysis, he is looking for one similar to it. Red, you're the expert in this area, could you provide a another joke analysis that is comparable?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Oops. Just spotted a real howler.

A possible rationale for a final 18 degree roll under autopilot control would be to create an impression of active human control.

So he's suggesting that the final 18 degree roll makes it highly unlikely that the plane was under human control, and that it was added to the flight plan to make it appear that the plane was under human control. This is known as "having it both ways".

The only other thing I note about this paper is that Monaghan is stating that the penultimate turn was a stable turn at a constant 20 degree bank angle, but doesn't advance any evidence whatsoever to justify this statement. The only comment related in any way to uncertainties in bank angle appears to be a statement that 15 degrees and 25 degrees of bank are each a "largely indiscernible difference" to 20 degrees of bank, which may be irrelevant or may mean that he can't determine to any better accuracy what the actual bank angle was. And yet, a key point of his argument is that a human pilot could not maintain a sufficiently constant bank angle to produce the turn observed. So, once again, it's our old friend the unevaluated inequality fallacy; Monaghan claims that the variation in bank angle was less than the expected variation in bank angle, but we aren't offered values for either. I suspect he's made no effort to calculate them.

So, we've got the two-way proof, the unevaluated inequality, the Texas Sharpshooter, the false di(or tri, in this case)lemma, and yet even Monaghan admits he wouldn't have proved his case even if all these fallacies were rigorously correct.

The ony question remaining is how this passed peer review. Bonus points if you can keep a straight face while asking it.

Dave