http://www.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=04/03/14/212247Political Newsletter
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Flight 11 - The Twin Flight
posted by ewing2001 on Sunday March 14, @10:35AM
from the Woody-Box dept.
Ewing2001 presents:
Flight 11 - The Twin Flight
An examination on the critical moments of September 11 at Logan Airport by Woody Box
The efforts necessary to research and formulate this text are dedicated to the victims of Sept.11 and their loved ones, and especially to the victims of flight 11.
I know them a bit by now, and I like them.
Where did Flight 11 start? Almost everyone knows the answer: this was in Boston. But if you want it a bit more precise and ask for the specific gate the airplane left from, your interview partner most likely will just raise his eyebrows and present a counter-question: "Why do you want to know that?"
This is about to change. On closer inspection, the question for the gate is not trivial at all, but highly intriguing. There are two answers: Gate 26 and Gate 32. And both answers resist any attempt to refute them.
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Flight 11 was an institution on Logan, Airport, it used to be the American Airlines´ early morning transcontinental flight for years. The flight was popular among flight attendants because usually wasnft full of passengers, sometimes not even half full. Its departure was scheduled regularly for 7:45 a.m. at Terminal B, Gate 32. And so it was on Sept. 11, as this radio transcript shows: "7:45:48 -- Ground Control 1: American eleven heavy boston ground gate thirty two you´re going to wait for a Saab to go by then push back" (1).
This document is encountered by press reports claiming that the passengers of flight 11 embarked on an airplane at Gate 26 (2). This gate is located in another wing of Terminal B and about 1000 ft. away from Gate 32. Gate 26 is the "official version", and apart from one exception, Gate 32 is never mentioned (3). The confusion is completed by the fact that this airplane´s departure (which I will name "plane-26" as opposed to "plane-32") was delayed, i.e. it left the gate later than 7:45 a.m (4). This has been confirmed by several witnesses (5).
Summarizing the diverse reports and witness statements yields the following double timeline for flight 11:
(x): source x
* No data found; estimated half an hour before scheduled departure
** No data found; estimated quarter an hour before scheduled departure
*** Estimation based on witness statements
Instead of favoring one of the planes and hopelessly trying to invalidate the evidence for the other one, it´s a better idea to get familiar with the thought that there was a plane labeled "flight 11" at both gates (6).
Then we must realize the consequences of this surprise with regard to the criminal case of 9/11.
The issue in question is the identity of the doomed plane. Plane-32 is the jet that crashed into the WTC North Tower. Its flight path is well documented by the transponder data, the radar data and the radio talk with the controllers, at least up to a few minutes before the crash. But there is no evidence of any people embarking, or intending to embark, on a plane starting at 7:45 from Gate 32, not one report, not one witness. Whereas it´s possible that the passengers boarded partly plane-26, partly plane-32, it seems to be far more likely that the irregularity of the two gates is part of a hitherto unknown plan to get control of plane-32 without disturbing passengers or crew members. So in all probability, the plane was "stolen" from the airport by the so-called hijackers, - with no passengers aboard.
The people most concerned by this are the relatives of the victims of flight 11. They must learn that their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers etc. perhaps did not die in the North Tower. Sadly, there is virtually no hope that they are still alive because we´ve never heard of them anymore. But as every human being wants to know the place where his loved ones left this earthly world, it´s just a matter of time until questions for their real fate will arise.
The FBI and the 9/11 Commission, apparently unaware of the problem, should seriously scrutinize the hypothesis of the "hijacked" planes. If there were no passengers on plane-32, there was no need to hijack it. The pilot´s behavior - deviation from course, no reaction to controllers, suspicious cockpit talks - was supposed to PRETEND a hijacking. The resulting question - why did he do that, why did he attract attention so early instead of calmly following his deadly route as long as necessary - lacks an answer yet but constitutes a big challenge to every investigator.
Well, the flight attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney relate a hijacking in their phone calls (7). The problem is that the contents of the calls differ considerably, thereby diminishing their conclusiveness. Mrs. Sweeney, for instance, doesn´t mention with one word the mace Mrs. Ong is talking about. Instead, she describes a bomb with yellow wires, and this essential detail does not appear in Ong´s call. The two women are seemingly not in contact as they don´t exchange information. This is not the right place to discuss the inconsistencies of these two calls, but there are many to detect through careful examination. Therefore the identity of the callers and the authenticity of the calls are highly doubtful, particularly since they are not recorded, apart from the first four minutes of the alleged Ong call. The possibility that the calls came from another person simulating the voices of Mrs. Ong and Mrs. Sweeney with the help of voice-shaping software should not be dismissed flatly. It is known that the hijackers did a lot of test flights. Enough opportunities to record the voice of a flight attendant on a hidden tape. Enough time for a female terrorist to train imitating the captured voices.
Plane-26 is a far better candidate for a hijacking than plane-32 as there were passengers seen waiting in front of Gate 26 (Spiegel, see (2) ). Unfortunately, the only thing we know from this plane is that it was scheduled to depart at some point after 7:45 a.m. Its actual departure time is not known, however, and it´s even possible that it didn´t start at all. The official database of the Bureau for Transportation Statistics (BTS) doesn´t help either. This database contains all domestic flights of the big airlines, but on Sept. 11, flight 11 and its data are missing completely (8).
Perhaps some FBI investigator should browse his filing cabinet for the mysterious "5th flight" shortly emerging in the media after September 11. This transcontinental flight was scheduled to start at 8:10 a.m. in Boston, but it was canceled in the last minutes due to a mechanical defect (9). The flight number 43 turned out to be wrong afterwards, raising the question for the correct number of the canceled flight (10). In any case, the scheduled departure time 8:10 a.m. perfectly fits the boarding time 7:35 a.m. of plane-26 (Spiegel, see (4) ), so it´s quite possible that this was the delayed flight 11 at Gate 26. Note that American Airlines used to offer only one transcontinental flight around 8 a.m: flight 11.
This article raises many questions but fails to provide the answers. This is not surprising, though, because the author lacks the means to go deeper in his investigation, be it interviewing witnesses or sifting documents. Some questions, however, might be answered quickly if certain important documents are published, for instance the tape corresponding to the radio transcript in the New York Times. The 9/11 commission already has proven its openness to such ideas.
Was it really John Ogonowski who was sitting in the cockpit of plane-32 and talking with Ground Controller 1? It is said that Mrs. Ogonowski was never given an opportunity to listen to the tape.
"7:45:58 -- AAL11: After the Saab cleared to push, and we´re gonna need four right today, American eleven heavy."
Sources:
(1)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/national/...
NY Times (Transcript-Mirror, GFP)
(2)
Gate 26 was reported by several newspapers, especially the Boston Globe.
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/...
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/16/watt16.xmlA few weeks later, Gate 26 is confirmed by a Spiegel team coming to Boston and speaking with eyewitnesses (Spiegel 49/2001, cover story: "Was wirklich geschah" (What really happened) ).
http://news.globalfreepress.com/ewing/flight11_spiegel911.pdf, p. 37/38 (3,9 MB)