Welcome B1900Mech. Post #120, your first post was interesting.
Below posted by a user named Michael Hogan: May 21 2006, 07:32 PM at http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6819&st=15&p=63067&#entry63067
Below posted by a user named Michael Hogan: May 21 2006, 07:32 PM at http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6819&st=15&p=63067&#entry63067
Len Colby challenged Ron Ecker to: "find me ONE airline pilot in good standing (not the nut who got fired from Continental in the 80's after failing psychological exams) who says Atta, Shehhi and Hanjour weren't good enough to have done what that did."
Russ Wittenberg makes that claim during an interview on Wing TV (Whatever that is). Here are his claimed credentials:
Russ Wittenberg has numerous FAA certificates ranging from Airline Pilot and Flight Engineer to Ground Instructor and Aircraft Dispatcher. He is certified to fly an incredible range of aircraft including Boeing 707s, 727s, 747s, 757s, 767s and 777s. The supposed aircraft used on 9/11 were Boeing 757s and 767s.
At the beginning of the interview, Wittenberg says: "I started out in aviation as a graduate of the University of Miami, Florida, a Hurricane and I went through Air Force ROTC. And received my commission in the Air Force as a second lieutenant. Afterwards I went through Air Force flying schools and Air Force fighter pilot during the Vietnam Era. A hundred combat missions in Vietnam. And there I got out of the Air Force and I got a job with the airlines, airlines up in Miami, and I flew with them for a short time then I went with Pan American World Airways for twenty years. Then in 1986, Pan Am sold its Pacific division to United Airlines for 750 million dollars and 430 of us pilots went from Pan Am to United. So the reason I tell you that is because I have a unique position of having been with two different airlines. I flew the Pan Am 747 that went down in Lockerbie. Scotland sixteen years ago and I also flew the two United airplanes that were involved in 9/11. Those two actual airplanes."
"Well you can...you can simulate the flight in the simulator but what I'm talking about is they're saying this airplane was flown at around 500 knots which is beyond the speed envelope. The VMO/MMO speed of a 757 that down low is around 320 knots. So it was exceeding it's design speed envelope well over a hundred knots. Now when you start doing that and you start pulling high speed turns the airplane's going to start what they call high speed stalls and it's going to fall out of the sky. These...the only vehicle that could do that would be a missile or a jet fighter."
For anyone interested in the subject, I urge them to read the interview in its entirety and judge Wittenberg's credibility for themself.
http://letsroll911.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb...opic.php?t=4565
Here is another extensive article by Joel Harel, a member of Physics 9/11, which purports to be the "Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven." For his qualifications and others, see their member list. Harel claims to be an aeronautical engineer and pilot. He says:
"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.
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, vortex compression, downwash reaction, wake turbulence, and jetblast effects are beyond the scope of this article....
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."
Harel claims to have a letter from a senior airline captain currently flying with an airline involved in 9/11 containing the following statement:
"Regarding your comments on flight simulators, several of my colleagues and I have tried to simulate the hijacker's final approach maneuvers into the towers on our company 767 simulator. We tried repeated tight, steeply banked 180 turns at 500 mph followed by a fast rollout and lineup with a tall building. More than two-thirds of those who attempted the maneuver failed to make a "hit". How these rookies who couldn't fly a trainer pulled this off is beyond comprehension."
Once again, I urge the interested reader to examine Joel Harel's article in its entirety.
http://physics911.net/harel.htm
Ironically, I found this information at the very website Len Colby used to buttress his claim that: "Finding the Pentagon would not be difficult all Hanjour had to do was program the autopilot to fly the plane to Washington National Airport...."
and:
"Hanjour was not as bad a pilot as made out to be: he had a commercial pilot's license and about 600 flight hours and had trained on a Pan Am 737 simulator and 757/767 PC simulators. http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_school...outs.html"
Interestingly, the link that Mr. Colby provides for his claims provides all sorts of conflicting information at to the training and capabilities of Hanjour. I think people often find a website, pick out excerpts that tend to support their view, and post the link as if somehow it proved their assertions. Often, visiting the website actually offers evidence which refutes the very point they were attempting to make. If the reader doubts this, just visit the website supplied by Mr Colby (link above).
According to reports from CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/10/...ain508656.shtml
(CBS) Months before Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon, managers at an Arizona flight school reported him at least five times to the FAA, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.
They reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad, they told the Associated Press, they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license.
"I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had," said Peggy Chevrette, the manager for the now-defunct JetTech flight school in Phoenix......
Chevrette said she contacted Anthony (FAA Inspector) again when Hanjour began ground training for Boeing 737 jetliners and it became clear he didn't have the skills for the commercial pilot's license.
"I don't truly believe he should have had it and I questioned that," she said.
Other Arizona flight schools he (Hanjour) attended also questioned his abilities.
And finally from the Washington Post in an article entitled Hanjour an Unlikely Terrorist:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hanjour_history.html
While in Oakland, he enrolled at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics. He attended a 30-minute class on Sept. 8 and never came back. Dan Shaffer, the academy's vice president for flight operations, speculated that Hanjour was intimidated by the school's two-year training regimen and $35,000 price tag.
The next month, he turned up in Arizona, a magnet for aspiring pilots because of its clear weather and relatively affordable flight schools. Hanjour paid $3,800 by check and $1,000 in cash for lessons at CRM Flight Cockpit Resource Management in Scottsdale.
During three months of instruction in late 1996, Duncan K.M. Hastie, CRM's owner, found Hanjour a "weak student" who "was wasting our resources." Hanjour left, then returned in December 1997 - a year later - and stayed only a few weeks.
Over the next three years, Hanjour called Hastie about twice a year, asking to come back for more instruction.
"I would recognize his voice," Hastie said. "He was always talking about wanting more training. Yes, he wanted to be an airline pilot. That was his stated goal. That's why I didn't allow him to come back. I thought, 'You're never going to make it.' "
The last time Hanjour called, sometime last year, he was asking to train on a Boeing 757, the kind of aircraft he is believed to have crashed into the Pentagon.
Rebuffed by Hastie, Hanjour went elsewhere. In 1998, he joined the simulator club at Sawyer, a small Phoenix school known locally as a flight school of last resort. "It was a commonly held truth that, if you failed anywhere else, go to Sawyer Aviation. They had good instructors," said Fults, the former simulator manager there.
and:
That plot was in high gear by the second week of August, when Hanjour arrived in the Washington area for what appears to have been his final preparation - this time, at Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md. Instructors once again questioned his competence. After three sessions in a single-engine plane, the school decided Hanjour was not ready to rent a plane by himself.
Its 43 years after the murder of John Kennedy, and people still debate whether or not Oswald possessed the skills and the weapon to do what the Warren Commission claimed. Anyone can post a link to some "expert's" testimony and make a case for either side.
It's just a shame the 9/11 Commission failed to do a proper job of investigating, relegating the search for the truth in the hands of internet websites. I don't claim to know what happened. I wonder how others can be so sure.
Mike Hogan
This post has been edited by Michael Hogan: May 21 2006, 07:32 PM
