Ckmlb1 said:
Why would pilots that believe the official account come out to say so? You presented a site with about 50 pilots out of about a quarter million that operate in the US thinking it's an inside job. That's about 0.02% of pilots or something. But apparently some have, probably cause they were tired of hearing about crazy theories:
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Giulio_Bernacchia, experienced pilot:
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.
About Hani Hanjour, the one you claim could not possibly have been the pilot of the flight 77 into the Pentagon (with more pilot testimony):
"Impossible"? "No pilot will claim...?" Well, we did not have any difficulty finding pilots who disagreed. Ronald D. Bull, a retired United Airlines pilot, in Jupiter, Florida, told The New American, "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."
According to 9/11 "investigator" Dick Eastman, whose wild theories are posted on the American Patriot Friends Network and many other Internet sites, Flight 77 was part of an elaborate deception in which a remote-controlled F-16 "killer jet" actually hit the Pentagon, while the 757 swooped over the Pentagon and landed at Reagan National Airport! "With its engines off," says Eastman, Flight 77 silently "coasted" in to the airport and blended in with other air traffic. "There would be few people to see Flight 77 come through, and those who did would doubtless assume that it was yet another routine flight over Reagan National," he claims.
"That's so far-fetched it's beyond ludicrous," says Capt. Williams. "I've flown into Reagan [National Airport] hundreds of times and you can't just sneak in and 'blend in' without air traffic controllers knowing about it and without other pilots and witnesses noticing."
Besides, as Capt. Ron Bull points out, the Eastman scenario would require piloting skills far beyond what it would take to hit the Pentagon. "I've flown into Reagan National many times and my first trip in a 757 was no picnic," he says. "I had to really work at it, and that was after 25 years of experience flying big jets. Any scenario that has the 757 [Flight 77] taking a flight path over the Pentagon and landing at National unobserved is proposing something that is far more difficult � and far more difficult to believe � than flying the plane into the Pentagon. It's just not credible."
All from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20050422030553/http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_1253.shtml
And more:
As I've explained in at least one prior column, Hani Hanjour's flying was hardly the show-quality demonstration often described. It was exceptional only in its recklessness. If anything, his loops and turns and spirals above the nation's capital revealed him to be exactly the shitty pilot he by all accounts was. To hit the Pentagon squarely he needed only a bit of luck, and he got it, possibly with help from the 757's autopilot. Striking a stationary object -- even a large one like the Pentagon -- at high speed and from a steep angle is very difficult. To make the job easier, he came in obliquely, tearing down light poles as he roared across the Pentagon's lawn.
It's true there's only a vestigial similarity between the cockpit of a light trainer and the flight deck of a Boeing. To put it mildly, the attackers, as private pilots, were completely out of their league. However, they were not setting out to perform single-engine missed approaches or Category 3 instrument landings with a failed hydraulic system. For good measure, at least two of the terrorist pilots had rented simulator time in jet aircraft, but striking the Pentagon, or navigating along the Hudson River to Manhattan on a cloudless morning, with the sole intention of steering head-on into a building, did not require a mastery of airmanship. The perpetrators had purchased manuals and videos describing the flight management systems of the 757/767, and as any desktop simulator enthusiast will tell you, elementary operation of the planes' navigational units and autopilots is chiefly an exercise in data programming. You can learn it at home. You won't be good, but you'll be good enough.
"They'd done their homework and they had what they needed," says a United Airlines pilot (name withheld on request), who has flown every model of Boeing from the 737 up. "Rudimentary knowledge and fearlessness."
"As everyone saw, their flying was sloppy and aggressive," says Michael (last name withheld), a pilot with several thousand hours in 757s and 767s. "Their skills and experience, or lack thereof, just weren't relevant."
"The hijackers required only the shallow understanding of the aircraft," agrees Ken Hertz, an airline pilot rated on the 757/767. "In much the same way that a person needn't be an experienced physician in order to perform CPR or set a broken bone."
That sentiment is echoed by Joe d'Eon, airline pilot and host of the "Fly With Me" podcast series. "It's the difference between a doctor and a butcher," says d'Eon.
From here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060916205041/http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2006/05/19/askthepilot186/index_np.html/
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