Flight 77 missed the Pentagon: Flight Data Recorder

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.

Fortunately, groups like Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and Pilots for 9/11 truth have brought to bear their expertise and dedication to finding the truth. No one has proven their scientific analysis wrong yet.