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Okay, I just read that article about the alleged impossibility of aiming a plane at a large target and crashing it into said target. And the article has one huge hole in it:
But once you’ve rotated, climbed out, and reached cruising altitude in a simulator (or real airplane), and find yourself en route to some distant destination (using sophisticated electronic navigation techniques), the situation changes drastically: the pilot loses virtually all external visual reference cues. S/he is left entirely at the mercy of an array of complex flight and navigation instruments to provide situational cues (altitude, heading, speed, attitude, etc.)
I've flown over the Eastern Seaboard several times, and I can tell you that on a clear day (like 9/11/01, as all the photos clearly show), there are PLENTY of visual reference cues. I follow them, one to the next, all the way from DC (where I take off) to New York; and my ability to do this is limited by my knowledge of local geography, not by visibility. I would, of course, be unable to locate an airport and land safely there; I would also be unable to locate something as small as my house; but finding a huge and well-known building like the WTC or Pentagon would be much easier.
If Hanjour looked straight ahead through the windshield, or off to his left at the ground, at best he would see, 35,000 feet -- 7 miles -- below him, a murky brownish-grey-green landscape, virtually devoid of surface detail, while the aircraft he was now piloting was moving along, almost imperceptibly and in eerie silence, at around 500 MPH (about 750 feet every second).
Has this guy ever flown before? I've been in planes since age 5, and once again, when the sky is clear, details on the ground are quite visible from cruising altitude: rivers, towns, farmland, salt flats, hills, mountains, coast, highways, woods, Manhattan...and no, a commercial jet does not "move along, almost imperceptibly and in eerie silence." Big jets are noisy.
Can't you fruit-bats even TRY to sound believable? I've heard better stuff from the LaRouchies!
