How Good Were the World Trade Center Pilots?
How good a pilot would you have to be to hit the World Trade Center? For the record: We're short of facts, what follows is inference and speculation, the conclusions offered here could all turn out to be wrong.
Still, on the basis of the evidence today, two conclusions seem very likely. One is that the original pilots on the United and American flights were removed from the controls, probably by being killed. The other is that the people who replaced them in the cockpit were skilled pilots, probably with jetliner experience and training, and at least with special preparation in the systems and controls of these planes.
The first conclusion may seem obvious, but it's worth spelling out the reasoning. A pilot with a gun to his head might well be forced to fly the plane on a suicidal mission into the ground. (What's his alternative? If he refuses on principle and lets himself be killed rather than give up his passengers' lives, the pilotless plane will eventually crash anyway.) But it is very difficult to imagine that an unwilling pilot could be forced to fly an airplane into a building--in effect, forcing him to murder countless additional victims. It would be just too easy for the pilot to thwart the plan. In the last two or three seconds before impact, the pilot would need only to have shoved the control yoke to one side--or up or down, in any way missing the skyscraper and instead crashing the plane into New York Harbor. Forcing him hit the target would be like trying to force a sniper to pick off one of his own troops.
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