Animation from Flight 77 Flight Data Recorder: the last second recorded. Note the altitude, second dial from top.
September 29, 2010
By Craig McKee
In the last two posts, I’ve tried to show how the limited damage to the Pentagon and the lack of wreckage left by the crash show that a Boeing 757 could not have hit the building on 9/11. If that was all the evidence there was, it would be enough to disprove the official story.
But there’s more. A lot more.
Flight 77 took off from Washington Dulles International Airport at 8:20 a.m. on Sept. 11. Its last routine radio communication took place at 8:51. At 8:54 the plane went off course, and at 8:56 its transponder was switched off. We’re told it flew west until it was over Ohio. It then turned around and headed back to the east, although radar did not pick it up until it was back in the Washington area.
The plane could have gone straight into the Pentagon (it could have been flown into Donald Rumsfeld’s office), but instead it made a 330-degree loop so that it could hit the one part of the building that had very few employees in it.
The 9/11 Commission Report provided a synopsis of the exact fight path of Flight 77 leading up to its alleged crash into the west side of the Pentagon. It took into account the five light posts that were supposedly knocked over by the airliner in the seconds before impact.
But a breakthrough occurred in 2007 when the National Transportation Safety Board released the data contained in the plane’s Flight Data Recorder (FDR), including an animation that showed the altitude, pitch, and speed of the plane as it approached the building. The release was the result of an access to information request.
Instead of clarifying what happened, this information only added more questions. In fact, it flatly contradicted the official story.
The FDR was apparently found at the crash site, although it took six years for the information to be released to the public. We don’t know where on site it was found, or when.
Unless the device malfunctioned – and there’s no indication of this – then it established that the plane indeed flew towards the Pentagon at more than 530 miles per hour. But it didn’t hit any light posts. And it didn’t hit the building.
There are two reasons we know this. The first is that the plane was too high to have hit anything. The last second of data recorded by the FDR was at 9:37:45 a.m. – just as it was flying over the light posts (not more than a second or two from the Pentagon).
The altimeter clearly shows the altitude at this moment to be 180 feet above sea level. According to Pilots for 9/11 Truth, if you take into consideration the air pressure that day and how that affects the readings of the altimeter, then the actual height was really 300 feet higher than shown.
This means that the plane was 480 feet above sea level. Given that the Pentagon is 40 feet above sea level, this would mean that the plane was 440 feet above the light posts when it reached them. If you doubt this group’s calculations about air pressure, then leave them out. The aircraft’s altitude would still be 140 feet above the posts.
If the plane was this high as it approached the Pentagon, it would have to have gone into an impossibly steep dive to hit the building. Not possible in less than two seconds. That would conflict with virtually all the eyewitness testimony. And the surveillance frames released to the public contradict this. They don’t clearly show anything except a white blur moving towards the building. We don’t know what this blur was, but we can see in the surveillance images that it is moving parallel to the ground.
So which is the deception, the images or the FDR? They can’t both be right.
Oh yes, I said there were two reasons why the FDR proved the plane didn’t hit the building. I’ve shown how it could not have hit the light posts because of height. But it also could not have hit them because the actual flight path indicated by the FDR is not what the 9/11 Commission Report claimed. And, the angle of approach to the Pentagon would have it missing the light posts entirely, regardless of height.
Besides this, it places another post in the direct path that the plane would have taken. But that post was not hit. If you believe the plane was as low as is claimed by the 9/11 Commission, then it should have been.
Another tantalizing point: the Flight Data Recorder stopped recording data about one second before the plane reached the Pentagon denying us categorical proof of whether it hit or missed the building.
I’d say that’s odd, but frankly it’s entirely consistent with the 9/11 cover-up. It seems that the perpetrators think no one will notice these details.
Great article. I never heard about the black box info before and at this point it does not surprise me at all that the data recovered from it contradicts the 911 commission report, which is a labyrinth of a document in the first place. that rarely supports its claims with solid evidence. From what I can gather there was never a plane that hit the pentagon, maybe there was a plane firing missiles into it though. Fear=Control, that’s the way they operate.
Absolutely. And how much they can get away with is inversely proportional to how much attention we pay to what they’re doing. You’re right – there was no plane impact. It isn’t possible on DOZENS of levels. My next post (up momentarily) will shock some people if they haven’t heard about it before. It will show just how far the U.S. government was willing to go in 1962 to trick the country into supporting a war. Thanks for reading.
I am a Boeing 757/767 rated pilot. If you view the Flight Data Recorder data released it is not impossible to assume that the terrorist failed to update the Altimeter setting of the primary Altimeters therefore setting the incorrect datum with respect to altitude above mean sea level. The flight data recorder is like a computer rubbish in rubbish out. The only accurate low level altitude source would be the Radio Altimeter. While traveling at 560MPH and a very high rate of descent the radio altimeter sample rate of the flight data recorder was likely not fast enough to pickup accurate information. Please bear in mind these were extreme ground closure rates much faster than the aircraft systems were ever designed to monitor.
The last Radar Altimeter setting was 4 feet. And the Rad Alt works at the speed of light. Sure, lie about 77, all but the small kids DNA was found in the Pentagon with all the debris from Flight 77. Thus this article is BS. The NTSB FDR decode stopped 4 seconds before impact, and the raw data was later decoded by computer expert, and it matches the other data, and adds four seconds. This is verified by the DME in the NTSB decode which had 77 about four seconds away.
In addition, the NTSB did not finish the animation and had the Pentagon placement off by applying magnetic variation wrong; and did not correct it because the NTSB had no need to proceed further, the NTSB products requested were for the FBI, since 77 was not an accident, it was a crime. All evidence proves 77 impacted the Pentagon.
Wouldn’t it be easy to generate some fake FDR data?
“All evidence proves 77 impacted the Pentagon.”
What about the witnesses who describe a flight path incompatible with the damage?
“NoC debunkers” would (with a straight face) try and convince you that those witnesses must all be mistaken, or lying, or that somehow the evil CIT guys twisted the witnesses’ words out of context. The “NoC debunkers” are among the most blatant Cointelpro operation I’ve ever witnessed.
i live in the virginia area and i for one vividly remember seeing the tail section of a plane much smaller than a boeing 737 protruding from the west side of the pentagon. i also vividly remember eyewitness reports from the morning of 9/11 that said the plane flew down columbia pike, over the navy annex and towards the pentagon; not over i 395, over the citgo gas station and the south parking lot, and then into the pentagon at an angle as the official report states. also, the plane that i saw protruding from the pentagon was NOT at an angle, it was straight like the witnesses said which supports the fact that the plane flew down columbia pike and into the pentagon.
question: if the 9/11 official story is correct then how did the plane approach from the south and manage not to be seen flying over the highway, not be seen from the air traffic control tower at reagan national airport which is only around a mile away? why weren’t the air force fighter jets scrambled from andrews air force base when the plane from dulles international airport was lost on radar, when all of this is in such close proximity? with the huge military presence here in the dc-virginia metro area and the first attack on the wtc why wasn’t the military put on full alert and fighter jets scrambled right away? why was there such a delay in the alert? was the delay on purpose or just overlooked in reporting?
All these stories seem to only want to debunk what happened…. where is the passenger list? Who is on it? What were all these families told????
The 9/11 events are huge coverups by the government..it is obvious they do not want the public to find out what actually happened that day. If they wanted us to know they would have conducted a massive investigation into every event that happenedthat day, and the demolition of bldg 7 at 520 pm…they do more investigation for a holdup at the corner store, than they did on 9/11…proves they do not want people to know the governments’ culpability in the events of that day…might reflect badly on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bibi..
I would agree, Jed.