Flight 77

From TinWiki.org

American Airlines Flight 77 was a Boeing 757-223 that hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It had on board 58 passengers and a flight crew of 6. According to official reports, Flight 77 took off at 8:20 A.M. EST from Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C. and was destined for San Fransisco. At about 8:46 A.M., Flight 77 began to veer dramatically off course. At 8:56 A.M. its transponder was shut off and, supposedly, all trace of the plane was lost until it struck the Pentagon at 9:38 A.M. Several oddities about Flight 77 have made it the most discussed and studied plane of the four that were used in the September 11 attacks.

Contents 1 Timeline from trouble to crash 1.1 First signs of distress 1.2 Turnaround 1.3 Scene in the skies of D.C. 1.4 Impact 2 Problems with official account 2.1 Time and response lag 2.2 Barbara Olsen 2.3 Amazing flunkie pilots 2.4 Question of bodies 2.5 Missing plane? 3 See also 4 External links 5 Related discussion

Timeline from trouble to crash

Flight 77 took off from Dulles Airport at 8:20 A.M., about 10 minutes late. The alleged hijackers had boarded, despite problems and being held in the checkpoints beforehand. The flight took off without incident.

First signs of distress

Flight 77 first began to show signs of trouble at about 8:46 A.M., which was the exact time American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north Tower of the World Trade Center. It veered 90 degrees off course from its intended flight path, a sure red flag for flight controllers and the FAA. However, no alarms were sounded even though it had been 20 minutes since Flight 11 had been hijack-confirmed and about the same exact time United Airlines Flight 175 had just been hijacked. Nothing was done even though FAA regulations state that turning so much as 2 degrees, or 15 miles off of an approved flight path, is grounds to call an emergency. At 8:56 A.M. Flight 77 turned off its transponder. The FAA claimed that at this point the plane was totally lost from tracking, even though radar could still pick it up.

Turnaround

Because of a lack of public information about Flight 77, we are given the approximate time of 9:10 A.M. for the point when it made a 180 degree turn and headed back towards the capital. According to the FAA, they had lost contact with the plane, yet at this time they had still not scrambled any Air Force jets to find the rogue plane, despite the fact that, at the very least, it was an air safety hazard. This is contrary to all FAA protocol regarding off-track planes, which would have had Air Force fighters in the air by now.

Scene in the skies of D.C.

Flight 77 allegedly reappeared on radars at about 9:30 and was seen flying over the Capitol Beltway at about 9:33. The plane was traveling at over 400 mph and was flying too high at about 7,000 feet as it flew towards the Pentagon. It suddenly made an extremely tight turn, doing a descending spiral and dropping almost 7,000 feet in 2 1/2 minutes, a feat that a trained military pilot would have had difficulty performing. At about 9:37 a nearby C-130 that had just taken off from Andrews Air Force Base was asked to identify the jet.

Impact

According to the Pentagon, at 9:38 A.M. Flight 77 slammed into the western face of the Pentagon. Only one video is known to exist of the crash. This in itself is strange, as the Pentagon is surrounded by security cameras and there are usually other cameras in different areas of Washington D.C.

Problems with official account

Main article: Problems with official account of September 11 2001

Out of all four hijacked flights on 9/11, Flight 77 is the most peculiar, and numerous things do not appear to add up. This is perhaps why it is could very well be the most debated and discussed flight in history.

Time and response lag

Flight 77 took off at 8:20 A.M. A few minutes later on Flight 11, the flight attendants were phoning in reports of a hijacking taking place. A few minutes later air traffic controllers heard a voice in the cockpit claiming, "We have some planes." It was turning dramatically off course, a red flag for any air traffic controller. At this point, the Air Force should have been scrambled after Flight 11. However, according to NORAD, they were not notified until 8:37 A.M.

At 8:46 A.M., Flight 11 hit the WTC. At the same time, Flight 77 began to make a 90 degree turn which, by FAA protocol, should have initiated a jet fighter pursuit, especially with one hijack confirmation crashing and another taking place near New York. After flight 175 hit the second tower, there was no question in anyone's mind that a terrorist attack was underway. A few minutes later, Flight 77's transponder signal was turned off. At this point there should have been swarms of fighter jets in the air over Washington D.C., as would be the standard practice, especially since Flight 77, taking off from Dulles, could very well be on its way back to Washington D.C. Yet Flight 77, hijack-suspected for an almost an hour and hijack-confirmed more than 30 minutes before it hit--and after two planes hit the World Trade Center--was not pursued or even investigated on the ground. No jets were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base, the nearest air base and the home of Air Force One, and when jets were scrambled, it was done from Langley Virginia, 170 miles to the south and only 5 minutes before Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

Barbara Olsen

Flight 77 had a curious dearth of phone calls. The only exception here was Barbara Olsen, wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olsen. She made her two phone calls somewhere between 9:12 A.M. and 9:26 A.M. However, the only evidence we have of these calls is from Ted Olsen. No known recordings of her calls exist. She also claimed to use the air phone instead of her cell phone because her purse was in the back of the plane and she could not get to it. How she activated the phone without a credit card is subject to debate.

Amazing flunkie pilots

The alleged lead hijacker and pilot for Flight 77, Hani Hanjour, was by all accounts, a total failure at his flight training school. His instructors at Sorbi's Flying Club described him as "clueless" and said they were quite sure he would never make it as a pilot. This was training in small, light planes. Hanjour had never been in the cockpit of a commercial jet. Yet according to the official accounts, it was he who performed the amazing acrobatics in the Boeing 757 over the skies of D.C., feats of flying even military fighter pilots would be hard-pressed to perform--feats of flying that are believed to have pushed the plane past its software limits.

Question of bodies

The remains of the victims of Flight 77 are the most puzzling. The remains of bodies found were shipped to Dover Air Force Base for identification. According to official reports, 184 of 189 Victims in the Pentagon had been identified, and all but one individual on Flight 77 had been identified. Yet many questions remained, including claims that no Arabic or Middle Eastern remains were found.

Missing plane?

Because of an apparent lack of crash debris, building damage, and lawn damage, an entire school of conspiracy thought claims that a plane was not used at all in the Pentagon attack, but instead a cruise missile dressed up to look like a plane. Eyewitness accounts are dismissed, and instead they point to damage to the Pentagon consistent with a missile strike. They also point to the fact that no damage exists to the lawn near the building, and that photos show an absence of debris where the plane supposedly bumped the lawn before it crashed. This has caused a lot of division in skeptics of the 9/11 official account.

See also

• Flight 93

External links

• Flight 77 Timeline
  
• 9-11 Research: Flight 77
• Flight 77 Info

Related discussion

• Planes exceeded Software Limits
  
• A Boeing 757 Struck the Pentagon
  
• No Arabs on Flight 77
  
• A Boeing 757 Did Not Hit Pentagon