The terrorists who crashed planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center probably were able to overcome the flight crews and then fly the airliners themselves, aviation safety experts were quoted by Vegas Sun internet edition as saying Wednesday.
"It's just incredible that you have these four apparent breaches of security," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, said following Tuesday's attacks. .
Attorney General John Ashcroft said American Airlines Flight 11 that left Boston for Los Angeles "was hijacked by suspects armed with knives."
Television commentator Barbara Olson told her husband by cellular telephone minutes before her flight crashed into the Pentagon that attackers had used knifelike instruments to take over the plane.
Current airport security systems are designed to catch people carrying metal weapons such as guns and knives, said David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association. And in recent years, much effort also has been expended on developing devices to sniff out bombs.
Darryl Jenkins, director of George Washington University's Aviation Institute, agreed that the easiest way to hijack a plane is to board it without weapons.
"One thing about terrorists is just how flexible they are," Jenkins said. "When you put up a roadblock in one place, they go around and find other means.
"I'm a pilot, he added. "None of us would ever fly a plane into the Trade Center. We would take that bullet first. Terrorists flew the plane instead."
That view was shared by Jim Burnett, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who tld the paper that a commercial pilot, "even under duress, would not do that. It would have taken some skill on the part of whoever was able to take over the plane."
A radar track of American Airlines Flight 11 that struck the World Trade Center showed that it left Boston en route to Los Angeles and began its path westward normally, but then made a sharp left turn to fly down the Hudson River to New York.
It was not known whether the pilot reported a hijacking. Even if a terrorist were known to be in control of a plane heading for a major city, coping would pose a huge challenge, Stempler said – Albawaba.com
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