Flight 77 Hijacker Hani Hanjour:
9/11 Pilot Extraordinaire

From the ridiculous to the sublime...

Federal Aviation Administration records show he obtained a commercial pilot's license in April 1999, but how and where he did so remains a lingering question that FAA officials refuse to discuss. His limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots. 

Hani Hanjour as a Cessna 172 pilot


Cockpit of a Cessna 172

At Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., 20 miles west of Washington, flight instructor Sheri Baxter instantly recognized the name of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour when the FBI released a list of 19 suspects in the four hijackings. Hanjour, the only suspect on Flight 77 the FBI listed as a pilot, had come to the airport one month earlier seeking to rent a small plane.

However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloguing 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons.

In the spring of 2000, Hanjour had asked to enrol in the CRM Airline Training Centre in Scottsdale, Ariz., for advanced training, said the centre's attorney, Gerald Chilton Jr. Hanjour had attended the school for three months in late 1996 and again in December 1997 but never finished coursework for a license to fly a single-engine aircraft, Chilton said.

When Hanjour reapplied to the centre last year, "We declined to provide training to him because we didn't think he was a good enough student when he was there in 1996 and 1997" Chilton said. 

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
Outline of the 9/11 Plot

[Excerpt]

On December 12, 2000, [Nawaf al Hazmi and Hani Hanjour] were settling in Mesa, Arizona, and Hanjour was ready to brush up on his flight training [Brush up? He could barely fly a Cessna]. By early 2001, he was using a Boeing 737 simulator. Because his performance struck his flight instructors as sub-standard, they discouraged Hanjour from continuing, but he persisted.
After wisely investing $40 {he bought a poster of the 757 cockpit layout] Hanjour produced the following miraculous results on 9/11:

Hani Hanjour as a Boeing 757 pilot


Cockpit of a Boeing 757

At a speed of about 500 miles an hour, the plane was headed straight for what is known as P-56, protected air space 56, which covers the White House and the Capitol.

"The speed, the manoeuvrability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," says O'Brien. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe." 

But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot [Hanjour] executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet manoeuvre. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.

Less than an hour after two other jets demolished the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, Flight 77 carved a hole in the nation's defence headquarters, a hole five stories high and 200 feet wide.

Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious.