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Flight 77 hijacking brevity
Summary
The sheer brevity of the take-over is kind of weird. From the last routine transmission by the pilot, it is 3 minutes before the plane goes off course. Couple of guys with box cutters get the pilot, the co-pilot, and the whole flight crew to move to the back of the plane and take control of the craft in 3 minutes.
The Pilots for 9/11 Truth don't think Charles Burlingame, the pilot, a retired military officer with training in anti-terrorism, would give up his ship to a guy with a box cutter without a fight. Burlingame's family and colleagues don't think so either. There's a thing called the Common Strategy, the official policy for dealing with a hijacking. It calls for a certain amount of cooperation; it does not call for handing the flight over to anyone with a knife.
The Pilots for 9/11 Truth don't think Charles Burlingame, the pilot, a retired military officer with training in anti-terrorism, would give up his ship to a guy with a box cutter without a fight. Burlingame's family and colleagues don't think so either. There's a thing called the Common Strategy, the official policy for dealing with a hijacking. It calls for a certain amount of cooperation; it does not call for handing the flight over to anyone with a knife.
Source: Pilots for 9/11 Truth; Nila Sagadevan article, various Web locations
Analysis
Soooooo...what does it all mean? The plane was taken over by remote control? Whoever really hijacked the plane had more than box cutters? We don't know. But we can certainly say the brevity of the take-over is at least somewhat suspicious.
Bottom line, me, I give it:
Discussion
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People's Court
Quotes
"He would never ever ever have entrusted a stranger with that airplane, when he had lives at stake. For them to take the pilots out of the cockpit, they would have had to eliminate them."-- Deborah Burlingame, pilot's sister
"Although the media portrays the Common Strategy prior to 9/11 was to fully cooperate, it wasn't to give up your airplane to a man holding a box cutter."
-- Pilots for 9/11 Truth DVD narrator
"Burlingame was a tough, burly, ex-Vietnam F4 fighter jock who had flown over 100 combat missions. Every pilot who knows him says that rather than politely hand over the controls, Burlingame would have instantly rolled the plane on its back so that Hanjour would have broken his neck when he hit the floor."
-- Nila Sagadevan, pilot and aeronautical engineer
Currently showing comments 1 through 2 of 2 total comments.
1. tnt 11 Jan 2008 06:01:28 PM
If the pilot's door was not locked, I think it's possible to cause the plane to deviate from its course within 3 minutes.
2. john 11 Jan 2008 09:30:41 PM
I don't know, not with box cutters. The plane -- I've seen the flight animation from NTSB -- it didn't just deviate from course, it went smoothly into its new course immediately, three minutes after a casual routine transmission. Three minutes. Check the quotes in the quote box. I've read other pilots say he would have just flipped the plane. He was a tough son of a bitch, Burlingame -- he would have done *something* other than meekly comply. Handing over your plane isn't something these guys do lightly. I totally believe that a skinny dude with a flimsy knife isn't going to put much fear of god into a guy like Burlingame.
It's fishy, I tell you, fishy!