"Orval Fairbairn" wrote in message
news
In article ,
Robert Briggs wrote:

David Brooks wrote:
gregg wrote:

His reply was that I would have no trouble and in fact would have
done a
better job than the terrorists (because I wouldn't have boresighted
the
targets like the terrorists did, but would have accounted for the
wind
during the approach - which the terrorists did not).

It's assumed they used some navigational assistance and not just
pilotage
(they knew the lat/long of the targets) so they probably learned how
to
program the avionics.

They may have been able to *read* the avionics, but *programming*
them seems a tad unnecessary when your target is one of the most
distinctive buildings for hundreds of miles around.

AND, the visibility was 100+ miles. Who the hell NEEDS avionics to
navigate under those circumstances?

Well, in some of the text that was clipped, I said "Two things I don't know
how to do right now: to disengage the autopilot, or FMS, or whatever they
have...". At least I'd want to be sure I knew how to turn this stuff off
before embarking on the mission - that was uppermost in my mind.

The other part is speculation: we've read the press that they had apparently
committed the heinous crime of purchasing GPS units. That sort-of says that
they were intending to use lat/long data (can you define and then fly to a
custom waypoint using airline avionics?). Remember, they didn't know what
the weather was going to be when they bought the tickets.

-- David Brooks