WTC terrorist Q and hopefully A

[Meatros]

As I’m sure we all have, I’ve heard a lot about the terrorists who hijacked the planes for 9/11. One thing I keep hearing though bothers me. It is that they didn’t learn how to land.
This smells of urban legend to me, but I don’t know for certain.

So did the terrorists indeed skip on the landing lessons?

[jb_farley]

no, that pernicious rumor started up pretty soon after the bombings. in fact, it was started by the FBI. lemme rummage around for a cite.

jb

[Gjorp]

I think I heard the ‘no landing’ thing before, but I never took it for fact. I thought it was just a joke.

[EmbarrassingDad]

It wasn’t a joke. The terrorists bought time on flight simulators and learned the basics on how to turn the planes, but showed no interest in learning how to land.

lemme rumage around for a cite.

[Meatros]

I took it to be a joke too, but some friends of mine believe it for fact. Hence my interest.

[Meatros]

Uh-oh, a competition for cites!!

[jb_farley]

dammit. i can’t find what i found before. here’s something, but not what i had before.

damned yahoo news and it’s shitty premium services.

jb

[partly_warmer]

Not wanting to learn to land would make sense, however. Landing a plane is more difficult than taking off or normal flight. Even if the terrorists didn’t openly say “skip the part of the class on landing” it seems unavoidable that they paid little or no attention to it.

It’s sort of like people saying: “I don’t have any intention of blowing up a bridge, but I was just wondering, what explosive would you use, how much, and where would you put it?” It’s obviously hypothetical, right? All in the pure pursuit of abstract knowledge?

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally posted by Meatros

Uh-oh, a competition for cites!!

Dija hear?! Cite-off at the Hot House!!!

[Meatros]

The reason I am curious is because some friends of mine are upset at the people who trained them, saying they should have known to call the FBI. I say even if it was the case, hindsight is 20/20.

[jb_farley]

okay, frickin yahoo has decided to suck my choad, so i can’t back up the following contention. take it with a largish grain of salt (about half a lot’s wife) until i can rummage up a cite.

not only have (some of) the flight schools denied the “they didn’t want to take off or land”, but they have come forward and stated (some of) the hijackers specifically requested such lessons.

fwiw, i know one instructor, who informed the FBI beforehand, did say that two of the hijackers seemed uninterested in taking off and landing (which made him suspicious), but that is a far cry from what most media have been trumpeting since shit went down.

jb

[EmbarrassingDad]

Sorry folks, I guess I lose the cite-off. (I can’t find a good reliable one).

What I’m referring to are interviews with the instructor at the Florida flight school which trained some of the terrorists. I think I saw it on the discovery channel.

I did, however, find a cite for jb_farley’s last post:

But [FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III ] told prosecutors yesterday that earlier accounts of Moussaoui’s behavior were wrong. Moussaoui did not tell instructors at the flight school that he wanted to learn only how to steer a plane in midair. Rather, he told his instructors he wanted to learn only how to take off and land, Mueller said.

This doesn’t really debunk my claim, however, because this is a different flight school, and different “students”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A31590-2001Nov14

[EmbarrassingDad]

Before I get nitpickers, I know Moussaoui was not one of the 9/11 hijackers. So it’s not really a good cite anyway.

[NurseCarmen]

The Minnesota connection certainly had that as the case

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020517-70217917.htm

“Moussaoui had enrolled in the Pan Am International Flying Academy in Eagan, Minn., and had paid $8,000 to learn how to fly a commercial jetliner but had expressed disinterest in learning to take off and land.”

As far as the others, I’m unsure.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

The terrorists bought time on flight simulators and learned the basics on how to turn the planes, but showed no interest in learning how to land.

Yep, I remember hearing it, too–it was a flight simulator teacher who said it, not a “flight school” instructor.

Two terrorists were under investigation by FBI

Atta, 33, and Marwan Al-Shehhi, who was on the United Airlines flight that crashed into the south tower, both trained at the Huffman Aviation International Flight School in Venice, Florida, for four months last year. They paid a total of $38,700 (£26,000) for the course, which ended in November.

A month later, they spent another $1,500 for three hours of flight simulator training at the SimCenter, near Miami. An instructor said they concentrated on turning aircraft, rather than practising the more difficult manoeuvres of take-off and landing, which he thought was unusual.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/100201/Floridian/The_terrorists_next_d.shtml

Atta and al-Shehhi earned their pilots’ licenses in late December and left for the Miami area two weeks later, practicing midair turns on a Boeing 727 flight simulator in Opa-Locka.

[AZCowboy]

It is not urban legend, but much closer to fact.

I remember a television interview shortly after 9/11 with the owner of the flight school in Venice, FL, who mentioned that the instructors thought it odd that Atta and Al-Shehhi had little interest in learning to take off or land, and much interest in navigation and level flight (the opposite of a normal student). I have no cite for this TV interview, but this story from the Guardian includes:

The Guardian Unlimited, 9/17/2001
A month later, they spent another $1,500 for three hours of flight simulator training at the SimCenter, near Miami. An instructor said they concentrated on turning aircraft, rather than practising the more difficult manoeuvres of take-off and landing, which he thought was unusual.

And Zacarias Moussaoi apparently had the same problem, according to this:

Time Magazine, 7/19/2002
Moussaoui’s “martyrdom” mission went ahead without him, largely as a result of his own sloppiness. The hapless 34-year-old Frenchman had been arrested by the FBI on immigration charges after carelessly arousing suspicion at a Minnesota flight school. Even in those infinitely more innocent days, a man impatient to learn to operate a Boeing 767 in midair but singularly uninterested in the art of takeoff and landing was not going to pass unnoticed. His more disciplined comrades were careful to avoid triggering alarms, diligently mastering the superfluous skills of takeoff and landing during their time at American flight schools. Moussaoui was a bust.

FWIW

[cards]

Anything Moussaoui says would have to be highly suspect. He was sloppy in executing his role in the attack, an avowed enemy of the U.S. and now he’s on trial for his life.

[Meatros]

So what I’m getting here is that the flight simulation part had the “uninteresting” comment. For the most part though the actual flight part they had to be instructed on how to land.

[partly_warmer]

Yeah, some flight instructor had to say “See that down there? That’s the ground! Now, son, you may not be able to tell the difference between good and evil, but it’s very important you recognize what that brown stuff is.”

[Meatros]

That had me chuckling partly!