M A I N   N E W S

Were terrorists at the controls?

London, September 12
The pilots of the doomed American airliners could have been dead by the time their planes hit their targets, according to British airline experts.

Ex-pilots believe that even a man with a gun to his head would not fly into a building housing thousands of people — and faced with certain death, would crash the plane elsewhere, according to a BBC News report.

And a terrorist with no previous flying experience would have found it relatively easy to steer a plane through the final moments of its journey and into its target, Mr David Learmount, Operations and Safety Editor of Flight International, told BCC News Online.

“It would be dead easy to aim an aircraft at a target that big,” he said. “They may have shot the pilots, or taken out at least one of them, and taken over the controls. I’m sure they would never have got an airline pilot to have done their dirty work.

“As a former pilot, I would just aim for the ground, even if it would mean the death of everyone on board. I doubt the pilots were at the controls”.

Other pilots also believe the crew were dead. “I’m sure they would never have got an airline pilot to have done their dirty work. I hope it was mercifully quick,” said one contributor to the pilots’ Internet site, the Professional Pilots’ Rumour Network.

Washington: US aviation sources said that the airliner that crashed into Pentagon was first headed for the White House, according to The Washington Post. Controllers at Dulles International Airport, about 40 km west of the capital, alerted authorities early yesterday when they spotted the jet on their radar screens. The aircraft had taken off westbound, then severed communications, turned around and headed at unusually high speed toward restricted airspace over the White House.

“The skill with which the plane was flown, including the knowledge of how to turn off the transponder, raised the probability that a trained pilot was at the controls, possibly a hijacker,” the newspaper report said. In the airline — and the three other planes hijacked — US aviation officials reportedly said, the transponders had been turned off. The communication devices send data such as the flight number, speed and altitude to radar screens. DPA

Hijackers had knives

New York, September 12
The hijackers of the two Boeing aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center here yesterday were armed with knives and grappled with the cabin crew before taking control of the planes, according to reports.

There were harrowing cell phone calls from at least one flight attendant and two passengers aboard the jetliners before they crashed, reports said, adding that US officials have began assembling a case linking terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to the devastating crash.

Attorney General John Ashcroft was also quoted as having said that the hijackers were armed with knives. PTI