Al-Qaeda planned more hijacks

Daily Telegraph ^ | June 14 2002 | ANGELA DOLAND

[xkaydet65]

"they put too much planning to allow plans to be foiled by mechanical trouble."

But they were. Flt 93 was late getting off the ground from Newark so its passengers had full knowledge of the WTC and Pentagon. This allowed Todd Beamer et.al. to make decision to resist, and take back plane or crash it.

Planes were kept on the tarmac, forced to land. Cockpit doors were guarded, and passengers were aware. This explains why no other hijackings occurred. But I concur with the comment that a greater effort should have been made to search and examine all passengers. People could have been kept on planes as local PD went through them. Some bluesuit would have gotten lucky and we'd have had an actual conspirator or two.

[VaBthang4]

"On what basis would he make this statement?"

I'd suspect he is making this statement on evidence neither your nor I am priveledged to.

"If they had planned to hijack more planes they'd simply have done so."

That is a dumb assertion.

Especially given that Al Qaeda drips were preparing to also highjack British airliners on September 11th but didnt factor in all airline flights being shutdown immediately after the initial attacks.

We all know there were several Arab drips who were apprehended days after September 11th on their way to different flights.

I am a firm believer in thinking before you post....I encourage you to do so next time.

[Mitchell]

That's exactly my point. There was no guarantee that they wouldn't run into a variety of problems (bad weather, mechanical trouble, random delays, passenger resistance, etc.). But if they had, say, a dozen hijackings planned, then they could be fairly sure that at least a few of them would succeed -- and that was all that was needed for the success of their plan.

[okie01]

"The comment about delayed flights could be valid."

An Air Canada flight from Toronto to New York was delayed on the tarmac by a mechanical that morning. When the grounding order was issued, it returned to the gate.

After everybody got off and went their own way, the plane was closed up at the gate. Later, that evening, a cleaning crew found four box cutters left in the overhead bins...

Toronto, it should be noted, hosted a major al-Qaeda cell.

[Mitchell]

Mosquito and medfly spraying equipment is of special interest. Here's some information that I posted on an earlier thread: click on this link, go to post #8.

Some spraying of pesticides targets mosquitoes or medflies. This spraying uses fine nozzles that would be much more effective than standard crop-dusting nozzles for use with a biological or chemical weapon. The nozzle size used is only 15 microns or smaller. Standard crop-dusting nozzles deliver their chemicals in large droplets, which is not what would be desired for biological or chemical weapons (since an attacker would want any such agent to stay airborne for as long as possible, and, even if inhaled, large droplets would probably get coughed out before reaching the lungs). Standard nozzle size is 200 to 350 microns.