why pittsburgh?

[pabloback]

can anyone tell me why the plane was downed in pittsburgh?
strong rumours suggest it was shot down by the military to prevent it getting to the white house
i have no idea if that is true or the geography around pennsylvania , can anyone enlighten me?

 

[lilfrk]

I heard it may have been headed to Camp David. Anyone else hear that?

 

[HARDKOREBJ]

camp david.not really sure?

 

[Angel]

What time did that plane go down? Maybe if it was after the two WTC and The Pentagon, they figured everyone was on alert, planes were being grounded and the military would be shooting them down if they went off course so they crashed it instead?

I also heard that the pilot asked for permission to redirect it's flight to D.C. and it was denied the request so it crashed, but I'm not sure if that is true.

 

[morninggirl5]

The US government has categorically denied that the hijacked plane that crashed outside PA was shot down.

Several eyewitnesses on the ground have said the plane did not appear to be in any trouble, engines sounded normal before it crashed.

 

[Orlanth]

I think it's aim was the White House. But something happend, and it crashed.

Taking out Americas WTC (economic) Badly demaging the Pentagon (miltery) Attempting to take out the White House (govermwent)

Cripple the most powerful Nation on Earth.

Or frame other countries trying to start a war?

 

[christo]

I'm from Pittsburgh, and my friend's family has a house on a lake about 2 miles from where the plane crashed. The plane apparently was near Cleveland when it suddenly turned back and headed south. At some point someone called the control tower asking for a flight plan to Washington DC. It's thought that the plane was headed for Camp David, or, perhaps, the White House or Capitol.

A man locked himself in the bathroom and called 911, and said that the plane had been hijacked. He said there was an explosion, the plane was full of smoke, and then he was cut off. The plane went straight into the ground. There's nothing left, nothing. The local reporter at the scene said there isn't a piece of wreckage bigger than a water bottle.

I happen to work in the USX Tower in Pittsburgh, which is the tallest buidling in town, about 70 stories, 850 feet or so. The biggest building between New York and Chicago. They evacuated us at 10:30. My mom works on the same floor as me, and as they told us to go on home, we heard that a plane had crashed in Somerset County. I got scared, fast. My mom wanted to wait for her boss to dismiss her and I pretty much dragged her along and said we were leaving NOW. Walked down 38 flights.

Had the plane that crashed been heading to USX, uh, it would have been bad. We were evacuated at 10:30. The plane crashed at 10:10. It was, oh, 15 minutes flight time to Pittsburgh. Looks like it was heading to DC. But, I still have a touch of the willies.

Heard a plane fly over my house this afternoon. Must have been military, couldn't see it, but could hear big, loud engines. So odd to look out and not see contrails. Our sky is usually full of them. Just another surreal point on this horrible day.

 

[christo]

Oh, we heard the rumors that the plane had been shot down too, but tht seems to just have been a rumor. No other planes were in the area. And it would have been very quick action to get a plane there that fast and shoot it down.

 

[freakygirl]

go to this link for the chronology of the events http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/index.html

the fourth plane went down.. almost an hour and a half after the first plane crashed into the WTC.

this link here kind of explains more about the 4th plane

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/america.under.attack/index.html

www.cnn.com has some great info on it..

 

[Juliangel]

The four planes crashed abou an hour ad fifteen minutes apart.

Flight 11 crashed about 8:45 into the North Tower
Flight 175 crashed about 9:00 into the South Tower
Flight 77 crashed about 9:40 into the Pentagon
Flight 93 crashed about 10:00 in PA

The transponders were all turned off so they could not be tracked.

Lots of seculation about the 4th target and I guess there always will be. Most think Camp David was the target because it is the anniversary of the Camp David Peace Accord.

With the request to be dirverted to D.C. anything is possible.

Many reports say it looks like the plane was downed by people on board, impacting the ground with enough force to make a creater of 30-35 feet deep, leaving no wreckage larger than a briefcase.

 

[ohiobbw]

I haven't heard about the tapes yet. But I know a few people think the pilot may have delibratly took the plane down (it was described as a "nose dive" ) it was a rural area, and although the crashed killed the people on board, the pilot would've saved many more lives. But that's just an idea.


Also near Pittsburgh (I'm about 35 miles from PGH) there is a little town called Shippingport, PA. Less than 10 miles from my house, I drive past it everyday on my way to work. There is a nuclear power plant there, if that plane had crashed into that plant. It would've wiped out a lot of people (Including myself).

 

[Young Knave]

I haven't heard about the tapes yet. But I know a few people think the pilot may have delibratly took the plane down (it was described as a "nose dive" ) it was a rural area, and although the crashed killed the people on board, the pilot would've saved many more lives. But that's just an idea.


Also near Pittsburgh (I'm about 35 miles from PGH) there is a little town called Shippingport, PA. Less than 10 miles from my house, I drive past it everyday on my way to work. There is a nuclear power plant there, if that plane had crashed into that plant. It would've wiped out a lot of people (Including myself).

I heard that one of the passengers made a cell phone call before the plane crashed. He said that he and some of the passengers were going to try and do something and that he thought he was probably going to die. At that point the passengers of the plane may have had some idea of what was going on, so they would have had a reason to try and fight the hijackers. In the past, hijackers have not been known to crash the planes they take over, but once the passengers knew that these hijackers were on a suicide mission, they may have tried to fight them. The plane probably crashed during the struggle to take back the plane.

Just something I heard. Obviously, with all the rumors flying around and innaccurate information out there, it's hard to say how much truth there is to it.

 

[SweetCherry]

Just something I read earlier today. It kind of hints at maybe it was an amature pilot flying the plane, or one not trained in a bigger plane. Mabe he overcompensated or something like that and lost control. Tho from the sounds of it, the other hijackers knew better how to fly a big plane.
________________________________________


How good a pilot would you have to be to hit the World Trade Center? For the record: We're short of facts, what follows is inference and speculation, the conclusions offered here could all turn out to be wrong.

Still, on the basis of the evidence today, two conclusions seem very likely. One is that the original pilots on the United and American flights were removed from the controls, probably by being killed. The other is that the people who replaced them in the cockpit were skilled pilots, probably with jetliner experience and training, and at least with special preparation in the systems and controls of these planes.

The first conclusion may seem obvious, but it's worth spelling out the reasoning. A pilot with a gun to his head might well be forced to fly the plane on a suicidal mission into the ground. (What's his alternative? If he refuses on principle and lets himself be killed rather than give up his passengers' lives, the pilotless plane will eventually crash anyway.) But it is very difficult to imagine that an unwilling pilot could be forced to fly an airplane into a building--in effect, forcing him to murder countless additional victims. It would be just too easy for the pilot to thwart the plan. In the last two or three seconds before impact, the pilot would need only to have shoved the control yoke to one side--or up or down, in any way missing the skyscraper and instead crashing the plane into New York Harbor. Forcing him hit the target would be like trying to force a sniper to pick off one of his own troops.

So what about the people who actually steered the planes into the towers? As anyone who has used Flight Simulator knows, simply guiding a plane in flight is not necessarily that hard. Moreover, the controls of a big Boeing or Airbus are fundamentally similar to those in a little Cessna or Bonanza, and in a pinch any trained pilot could sort of handle any plane. (The amateur pilot's problems would come when he tried to land the airliner, since everything would happen much faster and with much more momentum than he was accustomed to.)

But changing what an airplane does can be difficult, especially doing it in a smooth, controlled way. All of these planes changed course and altitude substantially--and apparently without the out-of-control veering that an inexperienced pilot would have encountered. According to flight-tracking software, one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, American Flight 11, made a dramatic change from its original course--turning south, toward New York, rather than continuing west toward Los Angeles. At a minimum, accomplishing that turn would require a pilot who knew how to switch off the "Flight Management Systems" and autopilot that were programmed to guide the plane to Los Angeles. Amateur pilots, like me, would know how to handle the autopilots on small planes; they wouldn't necessarily know how to do it in a Boeing.

More impressive, Flight 11 was at 29,000 feet before it made that turn. It had to lose 28,000-plus feet of altitude by the time it hit the tower. Making a plane descend is easy if you know what you're doing. But if you were experienced only in small airplanes, a descent in a big airplane could be terrifying. You wouldn't know how much to reduce the power, to prevent the plane from gaining too much speed as it went down. (A descent at full power can push a plane past its "never-exceed" speed and lead to structural failure.) You wouldn't know how or when to arrest the descent, to be sure you could level off and be under control when you neared the target. Everything would be faster, bigger, and heavier than you were used to. You'd do what almost every pilot does when encountering a bigger, more powerful plane: "over-control" it, making the plane lurch from side to side and up-and-down, and "getting behind the airplane," reacting with ever-growing lag time to what the airplane was doing. The result would less likely be a suicide attack, like the ones in New York and Washington, than simple suicide.

In short, odds are that at least three of the four hijacked airplanes were flown by experienced pilots, who one way or another had gotten big-jet training. And conceivably, a difference in piloting experience may explain why the fourth hijacked plane simply crashed in Pennsylvania, rather than crashing into a target. When the facts are out, of course, the real explanation for that fourth crash could be something else entirely.