Fake Truthers Defending Official Account of Hijackings at 911Blogger

gretavo's picture

In the comments section of a recent post at 911Blogger about the oddities in the conventional (official or semi-official) account of the alleged 9/11 hijackings...

My previous article on this subject ...

If you have not already read it, be sure to check out my previous article, "Last-Minute Pilots, Passengers, and Flight Attendants: The Unexplained Oddity of 9/11." You can read it here:
http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2008/03/last-minute-pilots-passengers-...

This new piece is a kind of addendum to that article.

Interesting.

Shoestring, I always appreciate your articles! Of course, I have a couple thoughts and questions.

After reading your article, folks should visit the History Commons entry on the subject:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091101unscheduledpasseng...

Many of the late ticket purchases by passengers seem to be completely benign ( Mark Bingham had a hangover, Todd Beamer delayed his 9/10 flight to spend time with kids, many transferred from Flight 91 to 93 because it departed about "an hour earlier") but, that is not to say there is not more to learn.

Interestingly, if all these people had not booked their flights so late, Flight 93 nearly would have been empty. 16 of 33 passengers for Flight 93 booked their tickets on the day of, or shortly before 9/11.

Quoting the "Staff Monograph on the Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security" :

The 37 passengers (including the four hijackers) represented a load factor of 20 percent of the plane's passenger capacity of 182. This figure is considerably below the 52 percent average load factor for Flight 93 for Tuesdays in the three-month period prior to September 11; indeed, it represents the lowest load factor among these flights during that time span. In this three-month period, Tuesdays were the least traveled day for Flight 93.
http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/staff-report-sept2005.pdf - This link is dead
It is archived at 9/11 Myths: http://911myths.com/index.php/9/11_flight_passenger_numbers

So imagine if half of the 33 passengers had not booked their flight late. The plane would have been flying at an incredibly low load factor of about 10% - 12%. That is a lot of open seats, indeed, almost all of the 180 seats would have been open.

Regarding the pilots: Interesting. The wierdest event seems to be the override of piloting by McGuinness, as it seems it may not be too abnormal for pilots to book flights late. That would be my assumption. There are 3,400 daily flights at American Airlines and something like 12,000 pilots. Essentially in a period of four days, all 12,000 pilots could sit behind the controls of an AA plane. I can imagine a lot of opportunities in that 4 day period arising due to some pilots being sick, forced sleep time, vaction, etc.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/amrcorp/corporateInformation/facts/amr.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines

(This is also assuming, probably incorrectly, that the "12,000 pilots" figure means "pilots" only and not "co-pilots" too. If so, the 4 day period is cut down to 2 days for a full pilot rotation - due to the necessity of at least "pilot" and one "co-pilot' per cabin.)

So, I don't know what to say about it other than I am glad you wrote this.

In related news of the day:

The widow of Flight 93 co-pilot LeRoy W. Homer Jr. is releasing a book this month on the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Author Melodie Homer’s book is titled, "From Where I Stand: Flight 93 Pilot's Widow Sets the Record Straight." It honors her husband and his role on that day.

http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x290306242/Book-honors-Flight-93-co-pi...

**I just rolled through a dozen edits pretty quick on this comment, I am done editing now ;)

Those were my thoughts...

... but my question is this:

Were the pilots not killed by the hijackers on Flight 93?

According to one source you mentioned: No.

She sees 10 different scenarios about what happened to her husband on a flight now known for the heroics and cellular calls of passengers and crew. She is sure of only two things.

A coroner has told her Jason died "at the same time everyone else did." Blood testing, she said, determined that his death was from impact.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011216230102/www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1...

After reading the History Commons entries for the timeline of Flight 93, it is painfully aware that we know so little about what went down that day.

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?day_of_9/11=ua93&timeline=com...

*edit: removed sentence

Pilots

"Later, passengers reported seeing two bodies outside the cockpit, injured or dead, probably the pilots."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22CND-FLIG.html

Maybe they weren't completely dead, but they were certainly incapacitated.

Now, I doubt the coroner, because he had no experience whatsoever with plane crashes on 9/11:

"He had never been in charge of a case with more than two dead."

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011015newsmaker1015p2.asp

Yet, the same inexperienced coroner's specious comments about paucity of human remains were eagerly lapped up by no passenger theorists and others:

http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2007/02/many-misquotes-of-wallace-mill...

Yet, as your comment and mine show, the pilot(s) died on that flight and were identified from human remains in Shanksville. (Although I hope the coroner got some help with the identification process :-( ..)

By the way, here's Jarrah's passport:

And his plane ticket:

Jarrah with Atta:

Jarrah in Afghanistan:

Mark Bingham's plane ticket:

I know, I know, it's all fake. Northwoods is the thing. Like... David Ray Griffin said it in his book, so let's try to find more evidence to support this theory. It's promising!

Sarcasm in no particular direction aside, I think Northwoods-related conjecture is a dead horse flogged long enough now.

Hints taken

SC,

Thanks for the links.

Calls like Betty Ong's are priceless for containing no lack of clarity to the situation, other things are not as clear to me yet. Nothing to do with swaps or fake anything though....

I hear what you are saying about the coroner. It must have been quite overwhelming for him considering he and his fathers history in the town.

One link to shoestrings blog you mentioned contained this quote from the coroner, "I said that I stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes because it was perfectly clear what the cause and manner of death was gonna be. It was a plane crash......"

Overwhelming or not, it seems that he was not concerned about finding out if the pilots had been killed before the plane crashed. So, his words about the pilots death mean little: I see that now. Thanks

No doubt though, I am filled with questions and not enough time in a night to address them all.

Obvious need for a new 9/11 investigation

Thanks for the good words, Nor Cal Truth.

Regarding your comment, "The weirdest event seems to be the override of piloting by McGuinness, as it seems it may not be too abnormal for pilots to book flights late": Keep in mind what Steve Scheibner said: "I can count three times in 20 years at American Airlines that I've been bumped from a trip the night before." So this indicates that what happened was indeed highly unusual. And it didn't just happen with Scheibner. Something like this happened with at least four of the eight pilots and co-pilots on the planes involved in the terrorist attacks. So this is incredible!

There is, of course, one way the possible significance of this oddity can be determined. That would be for a new investigation of 9/11 to look into it thoroughly. It is as simple that.

The sound of pilots dying

Betty Ong:

If there are statistical anomalies regarding pilot swaps, please prove them scientifically.

wtf is going on here?

What do you guys make of all of this? I am not sure what is going on here. Does anybody have a theory or an explanation? This is really really strange.

Very strange indeed!

Paul: I agree with you completely that this is very strange indeed. Currently we can only make educated guesses regarding the possible significance of all these last-minute pilots, passengers, and flight attendants. As I mentioned above in my reply to Nor Cal Truth, the way to establish the truth would be for a rigorous new investigation of 9/11 to probe this thoroughly. If the investigators could get to the bottom of this matter, I think it would be a good indication that they were doing their job properly.

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gretavo's picture

9/11 Tells

Noun

tell (plural tells)

  1. A reflexive, often habitual behavior, esp. one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (e.g., a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals (gives away) information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold.
[edit] See also

[edit] Etymology 2

From Arabic ?? (tall, hill, elevation)

[edit] Noun

tell (plural tells)

  1. (archaeology) A mound, originally in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.

 

[edit] Statistics