Everybody on the news claims it would take a large organization to plan and execute these attacks. Why would that be? It would seem that all it takes is four people, one for each airplane.
Four people, who all happen to know how to fly a commercial jetliner? It would probably be rather difficult for one person to take over a plane. He would have to kill the entire cockpit crew, keep out the rest of the crew, also probably the passengers; and then fly the plane himself into the building. I saw a person on TV a little while ago stating his belief that NO pilot would dive bomb into a building just because he had a gun to his head. So we’re probably looking at multiple people in each plane. I’d be interested in hearing the black box recordings, so we can figure out how to stop this sort of thing.
I’d like to believe that the pilot would refuse to do so, but if a terrorist had proof, such as photos or a phone call, that my wife, children, parents etc. had been abducted but would be released if I crashed the plane… That might make the pilot comply in hope that they would be released unharmed.
Would you trade your life for the life of your family?
It probably would not be that hard to kill the cockpit crew, being strapped in as they are. I think the cockpit door opens outward and locks from the cockpit, so it wouldn’t be difficult to keep people out. Especially if you can stack a couple of bodies against the door to keep it from being broken inward. The hard part would be getting the pilots to open the locked door in the first place. But a terrorist could threaten to kill a passenger unless the door is opened, and I think many pilots would do it.
We were talking about this over lunch, and it seemed to be the consensus that each plane would need three terrorists. 1 for flying the plane (you don’t need that much training to hit a big target, no take-off or landing skills needed either) and 2 for crowd control. If you had lots of ammo, maybe only one for crowd control. Again, the more terrorists on each plane the more likely they would succeeded.
I imagine the details will come out as they analyze the data from the flights.
And GaryM, I don’t have a gun to my head, but I prefer to believe I would not trade the lives of my family for the lives of 10,000+ people in a densely populated area. I don’t think those pilots did. They would have landed in the ocean before hitting the towers, I hope.
My wag is that a flight sim. program and some research as to exactly where the instruments are would be enough to crash the plane into the WTC - more skill would be needed for the Pent. as is would almost be a landing.
I would say almost no one would crash his plane into the WTC even if a gun was held to his head but the piolet might have flown close to it without knowing the intentions before he was killed and then the terrorist took over.
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- How many terrorists per plane we don’t know, but the problem is that even if there was only one terrorist with one gun, the first few people to go after him are likely to be killed. It is unfair to assume cowardice on the part of the passengers; they had no idea of the pilot’s intentions. They might have assumed the plane was being hijacked to some location for a normal landing.
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- Also note that the pilot may have been killed after flying the aircraft into the general area, and then someone else flew it into the buildings. Which explains why the last one crashed in Georgia: the pilot heard on the radio about the whole situation, refused to go in the right direction, was killed, and the terrorist took over, who did not have any experience in flying a large aircraft and crashed in the middle of nowhere. - MC
The Devil’s Grandmother
I guess I’m just cynical. I do like to think that a pilot would make that choice as you mention.
It’s not just the organization to find four or five people to fly the aircraft. It’s also the planning, the research, etc. They all mananged to get weapons aboard apparently, which means that they all got through airport security.
Plus, we don’t know how many other attempts were either thwarted, or aborted after all aircraft were grounded. At least two other aircraft have crashed, and it’s reasonable to assume that those also had targets.
And I think you’re underestimating how easy it is to fly a jet into a building. You’re going maybe 300 miles per hour, in a giant lumbering vehicle. It’s not a simple matter. The people in the cockpit of those planes had to have training. Quite a bit of it.
Then there’s the systems - a number of different aircraft types were involved, each one having a completely different cockpit layout. Just figuring out how to turn off an autopilot requires training. That would tend to indicate that this was planned well in advance, with knowledge of what aircraft would be available on what routes, etc.
As I’m listening to CNN while typing this, they are saying that none of the aircraft broadcast ‘hijack’ transponder codes, indicating that this was highly coordinated and people burst into the cockpit and subdued the crews before they had a chance to communicate with the ground.
Then there’s the infrastructure to arm these people, get them into the U.S. in the first place, and get them all into position and through airport security.
And I’d guess that there were at least 2 or 3 people in each plane, meaning maybe 15 or more suicide bombers. How many other people would be in a group that has 15 suicide bombers.
CNN is reporting that the U.S. has ‘new evidence’ that Osama Bin Laden is responsible, and he had to have been the prime suspect all along. That probably means the end of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
I just heard that Barbara Olsen, a news analyst for CNN and common on-air personality, was on the jet that crashed into the Pentagon. In somewhat heroic fashion, she used her cell phone during the hijacking to call the government and warn them of what was happening. There were multiple hijackers on her plane, and they had herded the passengers and flight crew to the back of the aircraft and guarded them. So that answers the question. Multiple hijackers in each plane.
Rest in Peace, Barbara.
Just wondering, but did they have to get weapons onto the planes? Suppose you had 7 or 8 men involved (on each plane)…some could overpower the flight attendants, the rest could kick in the cockpit door. (I don’t know how strong those doors are, but anything hit hard enough will break.) Once inside the cockpit, the crew could easily be knocked out (or had their skulls crushed), removed from their seats, and one of the hijackers could control the plane.
It all points to a large organization, with the money to get so many people onto so many different planes at the same time.
Sam Stone wrote:
SteverinoAlaReno wrote:
According to CNN, Ms. Olson called her husband (Solicitor General Ken Olson) during the hijack, and told him that they were armed with nothing more than knives and “box cutters”, and that it all happened rather quickly.
Something about that doesn’t sound right – the passengers/crew probably outnumbered the hijackers by at least 10 to 1, pretty good odds against someone without automatic weapons.
Well, as I’m writing this, CNN is reporting explosions in Kabul, Afghanistan (including live satellite phone coverage from one of their correspondents) – could it be that Dubya has ordered retaliatory strikes (even before we really know who’s responsible)?
from the reports from cell phone callers on a hijack plane. some members of the flight crew had been stabbed. it would be rather easy to carry not metalic sharp objects on your person to use on a plane later. i would surmise that a number of hijackers used a sharp weapon to subdue the flight crew. then disengage the auto pilot and fly into wtc.
Flying the plane:
NBC was reporting that all four planes had the same layout in the cockpit, and if you could fly one model, you could fly them all.
Also, even if somebody without much experience COULD hit the WTC on a straight line approach (which I’m not buying), these planes looked like they were making for an airport, and then did manuvers that took some degree of sophistication to alter their cource and hit the WTC. These were people who had some piloting experience.
-LV
Also, it may be that the terrorists were sophisticated enough to know exactly where on the towers to aim for:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/11/collapse_background/index.html
This would seem to indicate a good deal of research went into this. But then again, we knew that already.
About the flying ability needed, at least one expert I heard said that it would not be difficult for a pilot to steer into the towers. You would not need experience with this precise aircraft.
From BBC News:
Note, I have no personal knowledge or opinion on the subject.
(bolding mine) This may or may not be 100% accurate, but it suggests that on this flight (the Pentagon one), somebody besides the original flight crew was at the controls.
On the contrary, their flight paths veered to and fro many times. That’s not sophistication, that’s the bumbling of neophytes.
It would not have taken much (if any) training to do what they did. They full well could have had the pilots do the difficult part (navigating to the city) and then done the rest themselves. That is my opinion, as I feel any sane pilot would have taken the aircraft out of controllable flight (to an inevitable crash…it’s easy to do with big airliners) if they had known the final intention of the terrorists. This, I suspect, is what happened to the fourth plane.
I disagree. They hit high enough (especially the first one) that the most catastrophic result possible would be a collapse upon itself as the buildings were designed to do, to limit collateral damage. I believe this is also a sign of poor piloting, but considering the rest of the skyline, it’s hard to say if they had an even had much chance to get lower.
Had they hit lower on the building, it may have caused a topple, which would have been much more destructive. The upper part of one tower almost did this, and probably would have with more mass at the top.
Some posts above may be missing a crucial point where they suggest that the weapons (apparently just knives or boxcutters) used were inadequate: the crew and passengers on board would have assumed that they were just being hijacked in the usual way, not as incidental passengers on a flying bomb. So they wouldn’t have been in the complete panic necessary to motivate them to risk severe injuries through attacking knife wielding terrorists bare handed.
And a box cutter is quite sufficient to slit the throats of the pilots and kill them real quick.