"The attack required impossible piloting." Some prominent 9/11 skeptics claim that the flight path of the jet that hit the Pentagon would have been humanly impossible in a 757, while others admit it might be possible for an expert pilot, but not for hijacker Hani Hanjour, the inexperienced pilot believed to have commandeered Flight 77.
In Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, Eric Hufschmid says: "I would say it is absurd to believe an inexperienced pilot could fly such a plane a few millimeters above the ground. The flight path of this plane is enough to convince me that no human was in control of it. I think only a computer is capable of flying an airplane in such a tricky manner. If terrorists flew the plane, they would qualify as the World's Greatest Pilots since they did tricks with a commercial aircraft that I doubt the best Air Force pilots could do."
Ralph Omholt's "skydrifter" website claims: "No pilot will claim to be able to hit such a spot as the Pentagon base ? under any conditions ? in a 757 doing 300 knots. As to the clearly alleged amateur pilots: IMPOSSIBLE!"
"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."
General Partin, an Air Force Command Pilot, sums up the case for Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon: "The alternative explanations just get crazier and crazier. In addition to the physical evidence and the photographic evidence supporting the official story, there are literally hundreds of eyewitnesses ? including many people I know personally ? who saw the 757. Besides that, there are the light poles that were knocked down ? which I saw personally and which are in the photographic record ? that can't be accounted for by a missile or small jet wingspan. Then you have the Flight 77 victim remains and the black boxes. If you reject all of that, then you have to come up with an alternative explanation for what happened to Flight 77. I've seen the alternative explanations and they're absurd!"
But despite all the evidence to the contrary, let's suppose for a moment that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon. Why hijack the plane and then crash it into the Atlantic Ocean, or fly it into Reagan National Airport, or do whatever else was done with it to make it "disappear"? Why hijack the plane to make it appear that it was used against a target and then not use it against any target? Why plant the black boxes and human remains at the Pentagon site? Wouldn't it make more sense, and be much simpler, to actually use the plane against the Pentagon?
