I don’t know if this has been asked before, but why hasn’t anyone challenged the official story of the September 11 attacks regarding the cell phone calls? I just don’t buy it and I’ll tell you why: today I took a private sightseeing flight all around western Colorado with the pilot and one other guy. We each had a cell phone. None of them worked at all, one (mine) was Verizon and the other two were Sprint or Nextel.
This sort of meshes with an experience I had the last time I flew out of Los Angeles. We were in a hurry to the airport and as we were freeway driving to LAX my phone kept losing its signal. So how can we believe cell phones were successfully used on September 11 at altitude moving 400? miles an hour?
Excluding the calls from airphones, aren’t cell phones the source of the wealth of our knowledge about the hijackings? ISTM this is a weak point in the official story. Why haven’t experts debunked it?
I’m not sure I’d say no mountains. I’m assuming this is ignorance, and you’re not some kind of mountain snob. Nevertheless, you don’t have as many problems with coverage. I remember being out one night and decided to call a friend, who, I’d forgotten, was out of town on business. When he answered, I said, “hey man, where are you?” He responded, “Mechanicsburg.”
You (the OP) are not by any chance coming here from this site or one like it, are you?
Quite a categorical statement there. And, there seem to be a few more screeds like this around the Net. Who knew?
But consider this. Given that reporters were able to use their cell phones from Air Force One, on the very day of the attacks yet, I have no trouble believing passengers on the doomed airliners also could. Air Force One flies pretty high.
Moreover, the whole accusation just doesn’t make any sense. (To me.) Airliners forbid you from using your cell phone during take-off and landing, but permit it during the cruise portion of the flight, when your altitude is typically 25,000 feet or more. If cell phone calls were impossible from airplanes flying at cruising altitudes, what have airline passengers been doing with their cell phones all these years? Imagining their conversations?
Finally, what possible motive is there for fabricating all these last-minute phone conversations between the victims and their families? How does that serve anyone’s conspiracy? And how did you get all the families to along with the ruse?
This hasn’t been my experience. I’ve only seen cell phones allowed at the gate with the doors open. Has this been a recent change? There are other electronic devices used during cruising, but not cell phones.
I suspect some people might have turned on their cell phones during the hijacking even though they weren’t allowed to otherwise. Also, there are “sky phones” built into the headrests of seats on many planes, which you’re allowed to use during flight - I assume they work on a similar principle but have no idea. (Flying United this weekend, I noted they use Verizon as their provider.) Anyway, passengers might have used these instead.
What BobT said, although it wasn’t me. I’ve been on a flight once when someone near me had their phone ring and had to do an embarrassed dive into their bag to turn it off.
Not that I have ever done any such thing (of course not, perish the thought) but cell phones DO work in airplanes. In addition to 9/11, there have been several instances of pilots in distress using cellphones to call control towers after radio failures - a use permitted under emergency circumstances.
It’s not that cell phones don’t work (they do, if they’re not out of range of a tower), it’s that there’s been some concern that a transmitting device like a cellphone might interfere with the equipment on board the airplane. For the critical phases of take of and landing they err even more on the side of caution and restrict many electronic devices.
It is likely that on Flight 93 just about everyone tried their cell phones, with a few getting thru. The conversations that are well documented, such as Todd Beamer’s, was actually on a Verizon air phone to Verizon’s supervisor. An Air phone is designed for use at altitude.
A few miscellaneous cell phone call conversations have been recalled by relatives of folks who were calling terrified. If they recall the conversation, they probably explain it and recall it as lasting much longer than it did – Completely normal, considering the significance of the call.
But airphones were the source of well documented, lengthier calls.
