• Value_Form2 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Wasn't the US gov't pretty clear they'd shoot down planes if they had to that day though? I don't think it makes sense for them to say they'd do it, then shoot down a plane, and then try to cover it up. I don't think people even would have cared if they did, it's super easy for them to say they had to shoot it down and defend that point, especially to Americans.

      • Awoo [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        To be fair you can stabilise a commercial plane really easily, it's the landing and taking off that's hard. If your goal is just to fly it in a straight line and not turn it at all then you just pull back on the controls and level the wings.

        • soufatlantasanta [any]
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          4 years ago

          yeah listening to the "don't sink pull up" warnings works if that's the only thing on your mind at the moment, not when you're simultaneously attempting to subdue attackers and coordinating exfil in a 40m long metal tube

        • Reversi [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          Okay... but we're talking people fired up on adrenaline and panicking and arguing over who's best to do it.

          • Awoo [she/her]
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            4 years ago

            Pieces of plane and bodies don't bounce 8 miles away from an impact site though, unless the plane was actually shot and those pieces were scattered in the air. That's the clearest indicator in the whole story really.

        • Reversi [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          Turns out that flying an actual plane is more complex than it is in a videogame. You've seen the inside of a cockpit, right? All those buttons and shit?

          Now imagine you've got a bunch of adrenaline-addled people crammed in there trying to figure out what the fuck to do, knowing that if you fuck up you die and if you really fuck up more people than just the ones in the plane will die. None of these people know how hard to pull on the yoke.

          They didn’t try and contact a tower to see if someone could walk them through it?

          Why the fuck would a random ass person have any knowledge of how an airline radio system works? This is some Mark Wahlberg "if I was there I would've done a sweet barrel roll and landed in Times Square" stuff.

          • soufatlantasanta [any]
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            4 years ago

            also there's two radios for nav and two for comms. changing the comms freq doesn't actually change the active comms freq you actually have to dial it in with ANOTHER button. if they were really flying for as long as it says they were they would also have been out of range of the local ARTCC or the attackers would have already made sure it was no longer in contact with ATC and the attackers would have surely disabled the xpndr.

            people here are nuts. real life isn't Flight Sim. jesus

        • spectre [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          The official story has nothing to do with the passengers controlling the plane

    • throwawaylemmy2 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      I mean the hijackers had mace and knives (I'm not sure on guns, which would be much harder to smuggle in but I think some hijackings before 9/11 had them now and then). Blinding the on-rush would've stopped someone from taking control. The hijackers/pilots that were in control having to fight back would make things harder to "control" the plane if letting go of the stick which would cause it to start to dive.

      Unless the conflict/battle for control was done in like a minute or two, it's not impossible for the plane to start to nose-dive and possibly stall/downward spiral into a fight to control before the inevitable crash.

    • Spartacist [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      That isn’t what the official narrative says. I’ve listened to the black box recording before. What happened was that the hijackers, believing that the door wouldn’t hold, appeared to have crashed the plane to prevent the passengers from gaining control of the plane. Nowhere in the narrative does it say that the passengers took control of the plane and then crashed it

    • PowerUser [they/them]
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      4 years ago

      Dick Cheney had authorised planes to be shot down and thought that the US had already shot three down that morning.