Quote: Originally Posted by lone wolf
Yeah ... you do.
No ... I don't.
Quote: just question that final mile, the "inexperience" of the pilots,
Can't disagree with you there, I wouldn't want to be in a plane with Hanjour as pilot....if I wanted to live. If I wanted a building flown into, on the other hand, he would do just nicely.
The guy did have a commercial pilot's license. Sure I bet he sucked at take off and landing and a lot of other manoevers, but what did he care? Much like the gold-digging woman who goes to college to find a man, who cares what the profs say. If she failed every course but bagged a lawyer, she succeeded. Instructors be damned.
Quote: and how they managed to carry it off undetected.
How were they undetected, it was known that there was a plan to fly aircraft into buildings afoot. They just didn't know when and where. Once they were in the air, it's game over Pedro.
Quote: I've even found and described a viable means to accomplish the feat.
Excellent, I look forward to seeing you published in an aerodynamics journal. Congrats.
Quote: Now, I'd love to hear your versions of the sciences of aeronautics and air control systems.
Guy got into the cockpit and flew the plane into the side of a building. When a guy went through a red light and hit me in an intersection, I didn't go running looking for physics professors to explain. I already knew what happened.
Quote: How does a flight school profile that says the guy couldn't maintain a Cessna in straight and level flight
I'm not really sure that's true.
Quote: match a flight that expertly bled off a compressive wave to fly a high-lift wing at much less than half the aircraft's wingspan?
As I said before, I'm pretty sure this whole compressive wave thing is way exagerrated. If it was a hovercraft or helicopter, OK, you got my attention. But it was a speeding jet.
You're asking me to explain how a guy with a reputation as being a wreckless maverik in the air, executed a wreckless maverickish manoever in the air? It's self explanatory.
Some points of interest from people who know way more than me:
In my opinion the official version of the fact is absolutely plausible, does not require exceptional circumstances, bending of any law of physics or superhuman capabilities. Like other (real pilots) have said, the manoeuvres required of the hijackers were within their (very limited) capabilities, they were performed without any degree of finesse and resulted in damage to the targets only after desperate overmanoeuvring of the planes. The hijackers took advantage of anything that might make their job easier, and decided not to rely on their low piloting skills. It is misleading to make people believe that the hijackers HAD to possess superior pilot skills to do what they did.
--
"It's not that difficult, and certainly not impossible," noting that it's much easier to crash intentionally into a target than to make a controlled landing. "If you're doing a suicide run, like these guys were doing, you'd just keep the nose down and push like the devil," says Capt. Bull, who flew 727s, 747s, 757s, and 767s for many years, internationally and domestically, including into the Washington, D.C., airports.
George Williams of Waxhaw, North Carolina, piloted 707s, 727s, DC-10s, and 747s for Northwest Airlines for 38 years. "I don't see any merit to those arguments whatsoever," Capt. Williams told us. "The Pentagon is a pretty big target and I'd say hitting it was a fairly easy thing to do."
--
Last edited by Just the Facts; Nov 14th, 2008 at 05:55 PM..