This is ridiculous. I go away for 24 hours, and when I return, there are well over 100 new posts, most of them nothing but bickering.
All of you need to quit it. That goes for the few remaining in the Truth Movement, and it goes for those mocking them equally. You all need to keep in mind that when you stoop to those levels, you are also leveling the playing field. If you know the facts, you are giving away your advantage, and you are attenuating what little hope there is of educating and finally moving beyond this behavior.
If I have to call in the schoolmarms, I will. Impress me with intelligent questions and restraint. This means you.
The following are examples of behavior that is utterly inappropriate. You will note that both sides are represented:
Now then, back to the purpose of this thread: Buried in the bickering and unsupported assertions are a few well-worn but appropriate questions. I will collect and rephrase them below.
Was Hani Hanjour capable of the maneuvers AA 77 executed?
The answer is a definite
yes. Those maneuvers were well within the capabilities of the aircraft. While they were unusual in ordinary operation, being faster at lower speed, greater
g-loading, and less steady than normal, these are all hallmarks of a
bad pilot. Absolutely nothing about those maneuvers required quick reflexes, precision navigation, or operation close to the performance limits of the aircraft. All of them were, therefore, not only plausible but in fact indicative of an amateur, such as Hani Hanjour.
We can verify this quite easily. As already remarked in this thread -- and somehow lost in the noise -- are two relevant points of information. The first is that
the man who trained Hani Hanjour believes he could have done it. As a flight instructor, he knows perfectly well that the task was relatively easy. Second, a
television show in Europe ran an experiment using a 757 simulator, and proved that even someone with no flight experience at all could have done it. Hani could do it, and in all likelihood, so could you.
What about remote control of the aircraft?
We've had multiple discussions on this topic before. One excellent and concise whitepaper is
here. Another thread on the topic is
here.
To summarize, it is barely possible to infuse this technology into the aircraft, but it would require an extraordinary research effort to do so. It would also mean fabricating aircraft well ahead of time, and somehow switching them. Furthermore, it is not possible to fabricate these aircraft in a way that the pilots and maintainers would not detect the modification. And the wreckage of UA 93 in particular would lead to these devices being recovered.
"Remote Control" therefore requires hundreds of millions of dollars, complicity of the airlines, complicity of the pilots, and complicity of crash investigators. All of this buys you exactly no increase in performance or tactical advantage, and also introduces technical risk to go with the risk of discovery. The idea is a non-starter, just like other ideas that require a technological
deus ex machina with no evidence in support.
Why was AA 77 not intercepted? That's NORAD's job, right?
This subject perhaps more than any other has been
beat to death here. The total number of fighter aircraft available, in the entire country, was
fourteen -- not because of "exercises," that was the doctrine at the time -- and most of those were chasing rumors off the Eastern seaboard. AA 77 briefly disappeared from primary radar coverage and became just another anomalous dot in the sea of air traffic. Coordination between NORAD and the FAA was slow. There were numerous other suspected hijacked aircraft. And the actual length of time between when AA 77 was identified as a target, and it crashed, was only
two minutes.
This is what happens in the real world. Even under less challenging situations, the examples of Payne Stewart and Matthias Rust illustrate that expecting a prompt, efficient, armed response just because a transponder code changes, or a flight plan deviates, is simply unrealistic.
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That should dispense with the argument. I invite follow-ups in any of the plethora of threads already devoted to these topics, of which I have given you examples. Bickering is, again, totally unwelcome and will be reported promptly.
My thanks to those few who are trying to adhere to the OP, and the spirit in which this thread was intended. I hope it has proven useful to some.
