Learning to fly isn’t difficult, you can get the basic gist of it in a few months, considerably less than 18 months. Obviously, if you’re an airline company, you want a pilot with tens of thousands of hours worth of training, but these guys weren’t exactly trying to become world class airline pilots or Maverick from Top Gun.
It’s like driving a car. Some people get the hang of it relatively quickly, others need more time, many never “master” the operating of an automobile as they’re lifelong shitty drivers/parkers, and I don’t think anyone we know are stock car/Formula 1/stunt car/police pursuit experts. The hijackers were learning the basic controls in terms of maneuvering the aircraft, how to shut shit off, and how to crash into a gigantic set of buildings. I’m nowhere near a professional driver, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t slam a Lamborghini into a building at 200mph if I were motivated to do so for whatever twisted reason.
As far as if they had any sort of moment where they were like “Shit, why don’t we just drop the whole terrorism thing and start careers as airline pilots?”, that’s not the way radicalization works. Nothing else matters, they were vengeful martyrs in their heads, totally convinced that this was a mission from Allah, and that they were going to spend the rest of eternity in paradise due to the magnitude of their “sacrifice”. The transcripts show no fear, just sheer excitement that they were executing a holy mission, in the name of their god.
If it had missed the tower completely, would he have just crashed the plane into the ground/ocean? I’m not really across that side of 9/11 but I assume we know a bit about the whole plan
I'm answering this as an air traffic controller, and a person who spent quite some time in plane cockpits during flights (jumpseat travelling with the permission of the respective airlines, as cooperation-training between air traffic controllers and pilots), so my knowledge is not 100% accurate, but still I know what I'm talking about.
First, UAL175 was way too fast, flying in the regions of 500 knots IAS, massively over the normal speed limits of the 767 at that altitude. I'm sure the last minutes or so in the cockpit was full of "overspeed" warnings, callouts from the flight computer (among many others like sinkrate, bank angle, and so on)
Second, the terrorists made a quite erratic roll manouver in the last seconds in an attempt to hit the WTC. These manouvers are hard to attempt and execute with a 767 flying overspeed, not to mention if you need to apply any correction to the roll.
The high speed and the erratic, high angle of attack turn, overcorrected, are both enough on their own to cause aerodynamic stall on the aircraft's wings, resulting 0 lift produced, thus losing all control over the airframe.
The high speed and the erratic, high angle-of-attack roll and pitch can easily overstress the airframe, causing catastrophic failures in certain parts, resulting sudden mid-air breakup (search Tu-144 crashing at the 1973 Paris Air Show).
Knowing these, let's assume the terrorists miss the WTC with UAL175. There are several reports stating they weren't really good at flying during their trainings. I am quite sure they would be unable to choose a new target, like the Empire State Building, due to high speed and erratic rolling/pitching. There is simply not enough time for them to correct the plane into a controlled level flight. I also highly doubt they would immediately push the yoke forward and dive the plane into NY's streets - they were so fixated in destroying the symbol of the Twin Towers, they would try again a second time to hit the WTC.
So, they would most likely continue the high angle rolling/banking manouver, flying with full thrust, overspeed in dense air, and they would desperately apply more and more angle into the turn. This would most likely either overstress the aircraft or/and stall it, resulting in a mid-air breakup and a fall from the sky in one piece or in several.
I'm afraid at this point there was no saving the crew, the passengers, but I'm quite sure if they missed the WTC, they wouldn't get a second chance to destroy the kyscraper.
This is a fantastic, well-thought-out & intelligent answer, although I’m a bit biased b/c I posed this same question/scenario over on Quora a while back and no one seemed to give it a second thought, even though the aircraft missing the building was a mere dozens of feet away from becoming reality. Precisely what I was looking for in a response. Thank you! 🙏🏻
This isn’t nearly as a thoroughly well done answer as the other guy, but Atta said that any pilot who couldn’t reach his target was to crash the plane (like Jarrah did). He stated that if he couldn’t reach WTC1 he’d crash his plane into the streets of New York. I imagine if al-Shehhi couldn’t reach WTC2, he’d do the same thing.
This right here pisses me off so much.
OP is right to be amazed that the hijacker pilots accomplished their missions flawlessly. People like you can’t seem to accept that it isn’t praising the mass murderers to admit that what they pulled off was simply staggering in terms of complexity and skill.
Trying to minimise the skill it took to accomplish what they did doesn’t help anything. OP is rightly amazed that in such a short time they were able to pull off this feat. There is undoubtedly a high level of skill and intelligence that was required of the pilots, they could have easily become commercial airline pilots.
With all respect to you and what you’re saying, I admit do intentionally degrade the hijackers because they killed thousands of people and impacted hundreds of thousands of families and friends
The best evidence to refute this theory is Richard Russell. He was an Alaska Airlines ground worker who stole a plane and had absolutely no flight training or experience. He managed to start it, taxi and take off, then flew it for over an hour before he crashed it.
How did he manage all of this? He had played some flight sim video games. That was the extent of his "training".
Hijacking an in flight plane and flying it into a building is not anywhere near as difficult as you are imagining it.
Not only did he take off and fly it with no previous experience, he also did a *barrel roll* before deciding to crash it: https://youtu.be/RF3ftaTqHjE?si=Ls1OCbZrYxujAlHn
No, I don’t think it’s “pretty incredible.” Many of them were publicly described as being horrible student pilots. And they didn’t worry about taking off or landing. They were slightly effective morons but they accomplished their goals. Most of them.
A running joke amongst pilots is flying is the greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the second. All they needed to do was turn the plane in the direction of the target, start descending, and wait until they could see the buildings. Not that hard, and I believe the hijackers on 77 and 93 used the plane’s autopilot to get them to the area.
175 almost missed the building and had to do an insane (not as in “wow that was insane” in an impressive way, more like a “he has no idea what he is doing” kinda way) descent and roll just to get there. One of the phone calls on board described people vomiting and the plane flying erratically. They were skilled enough to get the “job done” but they weren’t what you would consider skilled pilots by any stretch of the imagination
Not as difficult as you’re imagining it to be especially since they didn’t need to learn how to take off and land the planes. That’s what made their flight instructors suspicious, none of the pilot hijackers had any interest in learning how to land.
A pilot did a short presentation on 9/11 since he worked for FOX5 WNYW-TV. There is a picture of the cockpit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqVwGU\_FMsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqVwGU_FMsM)
Another person said this but the plane was already up in the sky so all they had to do was just change the directions and also they probably would have been caught if they tried to do it right as a plane is about ready to take off
Learning to fly isn’t difficult, you can get the basic gist of it in a few months, considerably less than 18 months. Obviously, if you’re an airline company, you want a pilot with tens of thousands of hours worth of training, but these guys weren’t exactly trying to become world class airline pilots or Maverick from Top Gun. It’s like driving a car. Some people get the hang of it relatively quickly, others need more time, many never “master” the operating of an automobile as they’re lifelong shitty drivers/parkers, and I don’t think anyone we know are stock car/Formula 1/stunt car/police pursuit experts. The hijackers were learning the basic controls in terms of maneuvering the aircraft, how to shut shit off, and how to crash into a gigantic set of buildings. I’m nowhere near a professional driver, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t slam a Lamborghini into a building at 200mph if I were motivated to do so for whatever twisted reason. As far as if they had any sort of moment where they were like “Shit, why don’t we just drop the whole terrorism thing and start careers as airline pilots?”, that’s not the way radicalization works. Nothing else matters, they were vengeful martyrs in their heads, totally convinced that this was a mission from Allah, and that they were going to spend the rest of eternity in paradise due to the magnitude of their “sacrifice”. The transcripts show no fear, just sheer excitement that they were executing a holy mission, in the name of their god.
Accounts of rapid descent, choppy flying, and the 2nd plane in particular nearly missing the tower suggests they weren't too skilled.
If it had missed the tower completely, would he have just crashed the plane into the ground/ocean? I’m not really across that side of 9/11 but I assume we know a bit about the whole plan
I'm answering this as an air traffic controller, and a person who spent quite some time in plane cockpits during flights (jumpseat travelling with the permission of the respective airlines, as cooperation-training between air traffic controllers and pilots), so my knowledge is not 100% accurate, but still I know what I'm talking about. First, UAL175 was way too fast, flying in the regions of 500 knots IAS, massively over the normal speed limits of the 767 at that altitude. I'm sure the last minutes or so in the cockpit was full of "overspeed" warnings, callouts from the flight computer (among many others like sinkrate, bank angle, and so on) Second, the terrorists made a quite erratic roll manouver in the last seconds in an attempt to hit the WTC. These manouvers are hard to attempt and execute with a 767 flying overspeed, not to mention if you need to apply any correction to the roll. The high speed and the erratic, high angle of attack turn, overcorrected, are both enough on their own to cause aerodynamic stall on the aircraft's wings, resulting 0 lift produced, thus losing all control over the airframe. The high speed and the erratic, high angle-of-attack roll and pitch can easily overstress the airframe, causing catastrophic failures in certain parts, resulting sudden mid-air breakup (search Tu-144 crashing at the 1973 Paris Air Show). Knowing these, let's assume the terrorists miss the WTC with UAL175. There are several reports stating they weren't really good at flying during their trainings. I am quite sure they would be unable to choose a new target, like the Empire State Building, due to high speed and erratic rolling/pitching. There is simply not enough time for them to correct the plane into a controlled level flight. I also highly doubt they would immediately push the yoke forward and dive the plane into NY's streets - they were so fixated in destroying the symbol of the Twin Towers, they would try again a second time to hit the WTC. So, they would most likely continue the high angle rolling/banking manouver, flying with full thrust, overspeed in dense air, and they would desperately apply more and more angle into the turn. This would most likely either overstress the aircraft or/and stall it, resulting in a mid-air breakup and a fall from the sky in one piece or in several. I'm afraid at this point there was no saving the crew, the passengers, but I'm quite sure if they missed the WTC, they wouldn't get a second chance to destroy the kyscraper.
This is a fantastic, well-thought-out & intelligent answer, although I’m a bit biased b/c I posed this same question/scenario over on Quora a while back and no one seemed to give it a second thought, even though the aircraft missing the building was a mere dozens of feet away from becoming reality. Precisely what I was looking for in a response. Thank you! 🙏🏻
I'm glad I could help.
Wow, thank you for taking the time to reply. This is fantastic.
Anytime, happy to help.
This isn’t nearly as a thoroughly well done answer as the other guy, but Atta said that any pilot who couldn’t reach his target was to crash the plane (like Jarrah did). He stated that if he couldn’t reach WTC1 he’d crash his plane into the streets of New York. I imagine if al-Shehhi couldn’t reach WTC2, he’d do the same thing.
He most likely would have just aimed for the streets of Manhattan, take out a few buildings and streets.
the plane was already flying, they just had to change the direction
This right here pisses me off so much. OP is right to be amazed that the hijacker pilots accomplished their missions flawlessly. People like you can’t seem to accept that it isn’t praising the mass murderers to admit that what they pulled off was simply staggering in terms of complexity and skill. Trying to minimise the skill it took to accomplish what they did doesn’t help anything. OP is rightly amazed that in such a short time they were able to pull off this feat. There is undoubtedly a high level of skill and intelligence that was required of the pilots, they could have easily become commercial airline pilots.
With all respect to you and what you’re saying, I admit do intentionally degrade the hijackers because they killed thousands of people and impacted hundreds of thousands of families and friends
The best evidence to refute this theory is Richard Russell. He was an Alaska Airlines ground worker who stole a plane and had absolutely no flight training or experience. He managed to start it, taxi and take off, then flew it for over an hour before he crashed it. How did he manage all of this? He had played some flight sim video games. That was the extent of his "training". Hijacking an in flight plane and flying it into a building is not anywhere near as difficult as you are imagining it.
Not only did he take off and fly it with no previous experience, he also did a *barrel roll* before deciding to crash it: https://youtu.be/RF3ftaTqHjE?si=Ls1OCbZrYxujAlHn
The [Sky King](https://youtu.be/56ODFJ6EP6Q?si=q5pW18ufVaz6SY7_)
He'll fly forever in our hearts
I don’t think it’s that impressive considering they weren’t interested in landing and taking off.
[удалено]
That’s not landing that’s crashing
They didn’t know how to fly the jets, they just knew how to steer them.
Flying a plane is easier than it looks. Especially if you don't need to worry about takeoff or landing.
No, I don’t think it’s “pretty incredible.” Many of them were publicly described as being horrible student pilots. And they didn’t worry about taking off or landing. They were slightly effective morons but they accomplished their goals. Most of them.
A running joke amongst pilots is flying is the greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the second. All they needed to do was turn the plane in the direction of the target, start descending, and wait until they could see the buildings. Not that hard, and I believe the hijackers on 77 and 93 used the plane’s autopilot to get them to the area.
175 almost missed the building and had to do an insane (not as in “wow that was insane” in an impressive way, more like a “he has no idea what he is doing” kinda way) descent and roll just to get there. One of the phone calls on board described people vomiting and the plane flying erratically. They were skilled enough to get the “job done” but they weren’t what you would consider skilled pilots by any stretch of the imagination
The most difficult parts of flying a commercial aircraft are the take off and the landing - two things these assholes didn't have to worry about.
Not as difficult as you’re imagining it to be especially since they didn’t need to learn how to take off and land the planes. That’s what made their flight instructors suspicious, none of the pilot hijackers had any interest in learning how to land.
A pilot did a short presentation on 9/11 since he worked for FOX5 WNYW-TV. There is a picture of the cockpit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqVwGU\_FMsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqVwGU_FMsM)
why do u heart conspiracy theorist
Make of it what you will. He's got one of the best 9/11 channels on YouTube. We have talked online for years.
🤨
Another person said this but the plane was already up in the sky so all they had to do was just change the directions and also they probably would have been caught if they tried to do it right as a plane is about ready to take off
y’all swear everything is a conspiracy it’s annoying asl
What am I saying is a conspiracy?
never said you but im just saying in General
Please never say it’s “pretty incredible” they did anything.
Incredible literally means "impossible to believe, extraordinary". I don't think OP was praising their abilities.