Fifth to be hijacked plane during 9/11?

[ChrisBooth12]

This is my second 9/11 topic i have made but i just did a quick look on wiki and could not find the answer. I remember reading somewhere, possible here that during the attacks after all the planes were grounded several middle eastern looking men jumped up and ran out of there seats and exited the aircraft. The reason why i may doubt this story is the timing. The terrorist planned this and would have made sure all aircraft would have been in the air at the same time. What's the straight dope on the story

[jayjay]

Anyone who acted suspiciously that day wouldn't have gotten out of the airport. Once the planes were grounded, there was no way that five Arab-looking men running would have gotten anywhere.

And that's only assuming that the plane was still connected to the airbridge and hadn't closed the door yet. Once that door's closed, no one is "running out" of the plane. They'd have to have a flight attendant open it.

I say it didn't happen, just on the probabilities.

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by jayjay

Once the planes were grounded, there was no way that five Arab-looking men running would have gotten anywhere.

Hell, once all the planes were grounded nationwide, surely there was no way that any anything-looking anyone would have snuck off and gotten anywhere.

[Broken Hoe]

Originally Posted by ChrisBooth12

i just did a quick look on wiki

Why does anyone bother with that site? The content gets vandalized so much that it is useless.

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Broken Hoe

Why does anyone bother with that site? The content gets vandalized so much that it is useless.

It's an incredibly convenient starting point for finding information. It's totally unreliable as a primary reference, but it's a really good place to find information on some really obscure topics that you can then fact-check elsewhere.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Broken Hoe

Why does anyone bother with that site? The content gets vandalized so much that it is useless.

No, this is factually untrue: Most of the time, most of the content is at least a good starting point. Nature did a study, in fact, saying Wikipedia compares favorably to Britannica for the kinds of articles they have in common (the more serious, factual ones, as opposed to the pop-culture stuff). If you have doubts check the talk pages and the history but, by and large, it is a fairly good starting point, just like any other encyclopedia. (No encyclopedia should be your only reference. They all make mistakes, they all have bias, and they all have a lag between publication date and the present.)

[Cerowyn]

Originally Posted by Derleth

Nature did a study, in fact, saying Wikipedia compares favorably to Britannica for the kinds of articles they have in common (the more serious, factual ones, as opposed to the pop-culture stuff).

Not everyone accepts Nature's "study" as accurate.

[Zoe]

I was present for a lecture by John Seigenthaler, Sr. in which he describes the nightmare that he went through when someone libelled his character on Wiki. This is one of the reasons that I use Wiki with caution.

(John Seigenthaler is the founder of the First Amendment Center.)

Excerpt from the linked article:

As the target of a libelous biography on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia last year, Seigenthaler said he had been schooled in the difficulty of removing falsehoods about oneself once they reach the World Wide Web.

The anonymously posted Wikipedia biography said Seigenthaler had been suspected of involvement in the assassinations of President John Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and that he had defected to the Soviet Union in 1971.

Seigenthaler — who was a friend of President Kennedy's and Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant — chronicled his odyssey in trying to get the false material deleted from Wikipedia and find out who had put it there and why. The results of his efforts, though partially successful, he said, remain unsatisfactory overall.

The libellous material stayed at Wiki for four months.

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by Broken Hoe

Why does anyone bother with that site? The content gets vandalized so much that it is useless.

A) If you have any reason to suspect vandalism, use the History tabs to mitigate the problem significantly

B) Do you really believe Wikipedia is useless? Give me a topic to write about, put me on Jeopardy, engage me in a debate, spark my curiosity on a new subject, whatever, anything where I might find an encyclopedia helpful, and give me the choice between either having nothing or paying a small (hypothetical) fee to have access to Wikipedia, and I'll opt without hesitation for the latter. It's definitely worth something. In fact, my impression is that it's worth quite a lot, particularly so if you know how to use it well (as with any tool). It has been an invaluable source of information for me and many others; this is simply a fact. Useless, my ass.

[Broomstick]

Originally Posted by ChrisBooth12

This is my second 9/11 topic i have made but i just did a quick look on wiki and could not find the answer. I remember reading somewhere, possible here that during the attacks after all the planes were grounded several middle eastern looking men jumped up and ran out of there seats and exited the aircraft. The reason why i may doubt this story is the timing. The terrorist planned this and would have made sure all aircraft would have been in the air at the same time. What's the straight dope on the story

I don't think the terrorists had any more control over flight delays than the rest of us.

Well, that was my first thought.

I don't think all the 9/11 aircraft took off at the same time, did they?

I remember hearing about the "guys jumped off and ran off the airplane" story at the time, but I remember hearing a lot of other stuff that day that turned out to be bogus.

[Derleth]

It's interesting to note all lapses in encyclopedias, and Wikipedia's lapses are much more public than Britannica's and, therefore, bring much more scrutiny to the whole project. What is Britannica's true record? How many outright lies has it had, and for how long did it have them? How many does it still have? I doubt the people who publish it (and reap a tidy profit from the name) would agree to any such accounting, but it's what Wikipedia goes through every day. That is a big reason I find Wikipedia valuable.

[An Gadaí]

Originally Posted by Broomstick

I don't think the terrorists had any more control over flight delays than the rest of us.

Well, that was my first thought.

I don't think all the 9/11 aircraft took off at the same time, did they?

I remember hearing about the "guys jumped off and ran off the airplane" story at the time, but I remember hearing a lot of other stuff that day that turned out to be bogus.

I also heard at the time that carpet knives were found hidden in seats on another flight or some such jazz. Here's what snopes has on September 11th, 2001 and the aftermath - http://www.snopes.com/rumors/rumors.asp

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Zoe

I was present for a lecture by John Seigenthaler, Sr. in which he describes the nightmare that he went through when someone libelled his character on Wiki. This is one of the reasons that I use Wiki with caution.

(John Seigenthaler is the founder of the First Amendment Center.)

Excerpt from the linked article:


The libellous material stayed at Wiki for four months.

And the kicker was Seigenthaler could have fixed it the very day he came across it. Instead he whined about it.
I guess that the he could not get lecture fees if he had just fixed it.

[Huerta88]

It gets kind of murky. Moussaoui (who's clearly nuts) claims that he would have piloted a fifth plane had he not been arrested. But, there certainly were accounts at the time suggesting that an actual fifth plane was either on the runway or in the air. Google fifth plane September 11, the below is exemplary of what comes up. Warning: lots of CT.

http://911review.org/Wget/fifth_plane_hijack_911.html

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Rick

And the kicker was Seigenthaler could have fixed it the very day he came across it. Instead he whined about it.
I guess that the he could not get lecture fees if he had just fixed it.

There are a lot of people who just can't internalize the paradigm that anyone can edit Wikipedia. They may be aware of the simple fact of it, but they can't quite get it embedded in their heads in a way that informs the actions they can take. Prior to the internet (prior to Wikipedia, for that matter), if it was in print, you had to communicate with the writer to change it, whether that communication was a simple letter or email informing the writer of the error or a lawsuit against the writer for libel. Siegenthaler may actually just be stuck in the pre-internet paradigm that changing such things yourself is either impossible or forbidden by law due to the original writer's ownership of the writing.

[HubZilla]

One of the issues I recall is there are people who call themselves "experts" and subscribe to certain articles. Anyone who makes a change, these experts would just change it back.

This would seem to impede getting new info in about a topic.

[Deeg]

The advantage of Wiki over most other resources is that you can click on the "discussion" tab and get a feel for what is controversial about a topic. The history page shows all the edits and you can determine for yourself what is frivolous. Try doing that with EB or newspapers.

All information sources are suspect in some way. Wiki's reliance on cites and edit history makes it one of the best general references you can find.

[Scuba_Ben]

Originally Posted by HubZilla

One of the issues I recall is there are people who call themselves "experts" and subscribe to certain articles. Anyone who makes a change, these experts would just change it back.

This would seem to impede getting new info in about a topic.

Hence the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle. If the expert keeps reverting the change, start a discussion on the change. Just don't go scaling public buildings dressed as a superhero.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Rick

And the kicker was Seigenthaler could have fixed it the very day he came across it. Instead he whined about it.
I guess that the he could not get lecture fees if he had just fixed it.

It's likely the case that he's screaming 'libel' because he couldn't slant the article in his direction, or was trying to dump things in without any hint of citation. (Citing to a book he'd written would be enough if he'd clearly presented the insertion as something he was claiming. The citation is citing the fact he'd claimed it, nothing more.)

[CookingWithGas]

Would the Wikipedia people please start your own thread in GD or IMHO?

Thanks.

[Shagnasty]

As a side question, why do people still assume that the Pentagon was a primary target at all? It obviously was not. Both the White House and Capitol buildings were much more important but they are very hard to see from the air. The White House is just a huge mansion after all. The Washington Monument can guide you close to it but these were just pilots trained on simulators. Even the Capitol isn't huge or obvious from the air. If the terrorists had any sense or competence, they could have hit either of those two primary targets.

Instead, they couldn't see what they were looking for and went for the largest office building in the world that is obvious from the air due to its size and shape. The whole thing was shear incompetence and they even hit an area of the Pentagon under construction because they had no idea what they were doing.

Why isn't that pointed out more frequently? They screwed the pooch badly and failed at their mission. The World Trade Center attackers did a great job at what they wanted to do. The Washington D.C. attackers would have a hard time screwing things up more badly than they did.

[Derleth]

Shagnasty: Those are precisely the kinds of things that make some kinds of moron certain that the Pentagon crash was done entirely by the American government (with a missile, according to some theories) and I don't think anyone really wants to feed those trolls any more lines to confuse the ignorant.

[treis]

Originally Posted by Shagnasty

As a side question, why do people still assume that the Pentagon was a primary target at all? It obviously was not. Both the White House and Capitol buildings were much more important but they are very hard to see from the air. The White House is just a huge mansion after all. The Washington Monument can guide you close to it but these were just pilots trained on simulators. Even the Capitol isn't huge or obvious from the air. If the terrorists had any sense or competence, they could have hit either of those two primary targets.

The Capitol is ridiculously easy to pick out from the air. It's a giant building, in the middle of an open area, and in the middle of the city. Hell, you could use the national mall as an approach guide.


As to the OP, anyone who's flown knows that you don't just hop up and run off of an airplane. It's too cramped of a space, and there are way too many people in the way.

[CurtC]

The Capitol building is the most often-speculated site for where Flight 93 was headed. I've read some discussions that make me think that the Pentagon was the primary target for 77 - it was a strike against the military HQ of the Great Satan after all.

Yes, the pilot was barely competent - he came in way too high and had to make a circle to lose altitude, then he barely kept it from hitting the ground before the Pentagon wall, but he managed to do basically what he intended.

[Argent Towers]

Far from being factually unreliable, Wikipedia is edited mercilessly by its community of member/contributors. If you add something that's incorrect it can be deleted within seconds.

[Broomstick]

Originally Posted by Shagnasty

As a side question, why do people still assume that the Pentagon was a primary target at all? It obviously was not. Both the White House and Capitol buildings were much more important but they are very hard to see from the air. The White House is just a huge mansion after all. The Washington Monument can guide you close to it but these were just pilots trained on simulators. Even the Capitol isn't huge or obvious from the air. If the terrorists had any sense or competence, they could have hit either of those two primary targets.

Complete bullshit.

All the buildings in question are in close proximity to a prominent fork in the Potomac, which is the first thing I'd look for if flying to DC (as National airport is also close to that point). Yes, the Pentagon has a very distinct shape - but the green park areas - the Mall - is MUCH larger than that building, and being the tail end of summer would still be a distinct stripe of green in an otherwise urban setting. This would stand out quite prominently. Any pilot that can find a runway and land on it would be able to find that green stripe and make use of it. The Capitol is at the east end of it. The White House sits at the north end of another green patch intersecting the Mall. Cripes, that would hardly be different than doing a low pass over a runway, something everyone learns to do in their student pilot days.

If they could find the Pentagon they should have been able to find either of the other two buildings, particularly while flying at relatively low altitude.

At the time of 9/11 I had about half the training of the terrorist pilots, yet I was routinely picking out much less distinct features from the landscape while flying.

Why isn't that pointed out more frequently?

Because it's hogwash.

Yes, the hijackers had some trouble handling the big airplane because simulators aren't reality and they were moving like bats out of hell, but to do their job they didn't have had a lot of expertise in big Boeings. There is not, however, any reason to question their navigational competence.

[accidentalyuppie]

Originally Posted by ChrisBooth12

This is my second 9/11 topic i have made but i just did a quick look on wiki and could not find the answer. I remember reading somewhere, possible here that during the attacks after all the planes were grounded several middle eastern looking men jumped up and ran out of there seats and exited the aircraft. The reason why i may doubt this story is the timing.

The reason I doubt it is..well....reality.

If the plane is grounded and they are holding passengers on it, due to lack of a jetway or other reasons, the doors would be closed.

If the plane is at the jetway with the doors open and passengers are free to leave, they would leave. There have been situations ( late flight and I need to make the connection), when I have attempted to move fast and be the first one of the plane and these attempts are uniformly unsuccessful, at best I advance 3 rows or so and get lots of dirty looks. I'm just not picturing the scenario you are putting out there.

[Captain Amazing]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Far from being factually unreliable, Wikipedia is edited mercilessly by its community of member/contributors. If you add something that's incorrect it can be deleted within seconds.

I added something that was incorrect in 2006, and it's still there.

[Ponderoid]

Originally Posted by Captain Amazing

I added something that was incorrect in 2006, and it's still there.

Cite?

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by Captain Amazing

I added something that was incorrect in 2006, and it's still there.

Then fix it.

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Far from being factually unreliable, Wikipedia is edited mercilessly by its community of member/contributors. If you add something that's incorrect it can be deleted within seconds.

Yeah, it can be deleted in seconds, but most often errors languish for a lot longer than that. As I pointed out in the last thread on Wikipedia accuracy (and just focusing on comparisons of accuracy between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is bullshit anyway), I corrected a rather embarrassingly wrong claim, leading to the deletion of a whole section, on a very prominent page (the largest open problem in computer science) that was edited regularly. This error had been around for over three years.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party

(and just focusing on comparisons of accuracy between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is bullshit anyway)

No, it isn't. Not as long as other encyclopedias are accepted without so much as a raised eyebrow. All encyclopedias are subject to factual errors but only one is held up to the scrutiny warranted.

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

Yes it is. There's more to producing an encyclopedia than producing an error free document. The fact that so many Wikipedia articles are completely unintelligible, with atrocious choice of language, is something that is never mentioned. Further, an awful lot of Wikipedia articles are "cited" in name only. Have you ever examined the quality of cites used in some of their articles?

Let's not even mention the fact that the Nature study looks like it is fundamentally flawed, highlighting stylistic choices as "errors" when they're no such thing (and in some cases, being downright wrong).

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party

Yeah, it can be deleted in seconds, but most often errors languish for a lot longer than that. As I pointed out in the last thread on Wikipedia accuracy (and just focusing on comparisons of accuracy between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is bullshit anyway), I corrected a rather embarrassingly wrong claim, leading to the deletion of a whole section, on a very prominent page (the largest open problem in computer science) that was edited regularly. This error had been around for over three years.

Out of curiosity, what was it?

Also, I will admit that Wikipedia has many, often frustrating problems; however, that doesn't send it's worth to 0. Despite its many flaws (which we can, of course, discuss how to improve), it also has many strengths, and I still find it invaluable; the world with Wikipedia is much better than the world without it.

[Huerta88]

I will politely second the request to take up Wikipedia: Easily Fixed, Or Hopelessly Corrupt? in another GQ/GD/IMHO venue.

Not that I am sure there is much more to be said for the OP. But if there were, the Wiki battle would drown it out.

[greatshakes]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

Then fix it.

Don't you dare!

greatshakes

[ChrisBooth12]

My scenario is this: People were coming onto the plane when the notice to ground all planes came out. The captain said sorry we will be here for a while and the people took off.

Regarding wikipedia I have on more than one occasion made Luke Skywalker the only known gay jedi who is also very well hung. That was corrected in less then 3 minutes

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

I don't wanna hear about Wiki.

Or Gay, well-hung Jedi.

I wanna hear about these purported extra planes.

[jasonh300]

Originally Posted by HubZilla

One of the issues I recall is there are people who call themselves "experts" and subscribe to certain articles. Anyone who makes a change, these experts would just change it back.

This would seem to impede getting new info in about a topic.

There are multiple "experts" who monitor different articles on Wikipedia. Also, any article that is a hot topic is monitored by people and bots.

A friend of mine tried vandalizing a page belonging to a controversial political figure (non-malicious) and the page was reverted back within 5 seconds.

I've spent a little time reading the various edits in the history--when they do a revert, they cite vandalism sometimes, and if you read the vandalized pages, some of them can be amusing. But you can see what time the vandalism occurred and what time the page was reverted and it's always pretty fast.

[Huerta88]

Here -- a brand new thread for debates and opinions about Wikipedia.

[Huerta88]

Okay, back to the OP: I took the time and did the research, and here is the story, which comports with my memory at the time.

http://www.historycommons.org/contex...jackingaverted

I don't know anything about that website or the provenance of the story, but this is certainly the "fifth plane" story I heard at the time, and confirms that some guys did (reportedly) vanish after behaving suspiciously (they were able to do so because the pilot took the aircraft back to the gate and told the passengers to get off as the airport was being evacuated.