I read this earlier today. If it's true that this guy was a roomate of Atta, then it seems likely to this reader that he could have also been logging air time to partcipate in the eventual attack on 9//11/01.
The FAA reprot blames the crash on the Air Traffic controllers error (they were switching shifts) I think it's an ironic coincidence that this occurred exactly one year before the attack but I don't think it was a deliberate attack on that day. I do, however, think that Al Quaeda lost a 5th pilot on that day.
I agree that the 00 crash doesn't look like terrorism. If a skeptic like me could be convinced of anything, and there really was a relationship between this pilot and Atta... then perhaps we might now know why the date 9/11/01 was chosen. - a memorial after the fact makes more sense than a prequel.