Free Republic

Mike Exner, a prominent member of the Independent Group, has studied the radar data extensively. He believes that during the turn, the airplane climbed up to 40,000 feet, which was close to its limit. Exner believes the reason for the climb was to accelerate the effects of depressurizing the airplane, causing the rapid incapacitation and death of everyone in the cabin. The cockpit, by contrast, was equipped with four pressurized-oxygen masks linked to hours of supply. Zaharie was often lonely and sad. His wife had moved out, and was living in the family’s second house. By his own admission to...

What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship. In broad daylight, these pilots couldn’t decipher a variant of a simple runaway trim, and they ended up flying too fast at low altitude, neglecting to throttle back and leading their passengers over an aerodynamic edge into oblivion. [Extreme length]

October 20, 2002 'American Ground': Reverse Engineering at Ground ZeroBy JEFFREY GOLDBERG t the very end of William Langewiesche's slim but powerful account of the dismantling of the wreckage of the World Trade Center comes a story that served, at least for me, as an antidote to the overwhelming saccharinity of the recent Sept. 11 commemorations -- that great ''emotional bath,'' as one television anchor put it. William Langewiesche AMERICAN GROUND Unbuilding the World Trade Center.By William Langewiesche. 205 pp. New York: North Point Press/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $22. Langewiesche tells of a visit he paid this spring to...