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"But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver."

"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." Washington Post (9/12/01)

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But on the morning of Sept. 11, as Flight 77 veered off its course to Los Angeles and streaked toward Washington and the Pentagon, Hanjour is thought to have been the one who executed what a top aviation source called "a nice, coordinated turn." Washington Post (09/30/01)

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"Q: How could terrorists fly these? Were they trained?

A: Whoever flew at least three of the death planes seemed very skilled. Investigators are impressed that they were schooled enough to turn off flight transponders -- which provide tower control with flight ID, altitude and location. Investigators are particularly impressed with the pilot who slammed into the Pentagon and, just before impact, performed a tightly banked 270-degree turn at low altitude with almost military precision." Detroit News (9/13/01)

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"New radar evidence obtained by CBS News strongly suggests that the hijacked jetliner which crashed into the Pentagon hit its intended target."

"But the jet, flying at more than 400 mph, was too fast and too high when it neared the Pentagon at 9:35. The hijacker-pilots were then forced to execute a difficult high-speed descending turn."

"Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes."CBS (9/21/01)

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"To pull off the coordinated aerial attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Tuesday, the hijackers must have been extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators, a flight expert said.

By seizing four planes, diverting them from scheduled flight paths and managing to crash two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon, they must have had plenty of skill and training.

It was not known how the hijackers slipped through airport security checkpoints with their weapons.

There are no indications that any of the airline crews activated a four-digit code alerting ground controllers that a hijacking was in progress." CNN (9/12/01)

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"The speed, the maneuverability, 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." ABC (10/24/01)

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"And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second," says O'Brien.
But the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver."

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After the attacks, for example, aviation experts concluded that the final maneuvers of American Airlines Flight 77 -- a tight turn followed by a steep, accurate descent into the Pentagon -- was the work of "a great talent . . . virtually a textbook turn and landing," the law enforcement official said. Washington Post, (9/10/2002)

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"The Pentagon-Maneuver was one of the most difficult maneuvers you could do with a passengers-jet at all." Source (in German)

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Commander Kolstad is especially critical of the account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon. He says, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.”

Commander Kolstad adds, “I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!”
(Source)

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Commander Muga: The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training. In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it's not for military maneuvers. And while they are structurally capable of doing them,it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. (...)

When a commercial airplane gets that high, it gets very, very close to getting into what you refer to as a speed high-speed stall. And a high-speed stall can be very, very violent on a commercial-type aircraft and you never want to get into that situation. I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature.


Commercial airplanes are very, very complex pieces of machines. And they're designed for two pilots up there, not just two amateur pilots, but two qualified commercial pilots up there. And to think that you're going to get an amateur up into the cockpit and fly, much less navigate, it to a designated target, the probability is so low, that it's bordering on impossible." (Source)

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Darryl Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, said that those who carried out the attack were as sophisticated as those who planned it. ''These guys knew what they were doing down to very small details,'' he said. ''Every one of them was trained in flying big planes.''

A number of aviation experts agreed, saying the hijackers must have been experienced pilots.
(...)
But John Nance, an airline pilot, author and aviation analyst, said the direct hits on the two towers and on the Pentagon suggested to him that the pilots were experienced fliers.

The smooth banking of the second plane to strike the towers supports this point of view, Mr. Nance said. He added that precisely controlling a large jet near the ground, necessary for the Pentagon attack, also required advanced skill.

“There’s no way an amateur could have, with any degree of reliability, done what was done yesterday,” Mr. Nance said (New York Times)

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In a CNN interview on September 15, 2001, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak commented about the 9/11 events. His testimony is of interest because he spent his military career as a fighter pilot in the Egyptian Air Force. Mubarak was also one of the world leaders who had tried to warn the US government about what was coming in the summer of 2001. Mubarak said first of all that he found the US government’s official version, which was then taking shape, technically implausible. Mubarak: “Not any intelligence in the world could have the capability in the world to say they are going to use commercial planes with passengers on board to crash the towers, to crash the Pentagon, those who did that should have flown in the area for a long time, for example. The Pentagon is not very high, a pilot could come straight to the Pentagon like this to hit, he should have flown a lot in this area to know the obstacles which could meet him when
he is flying very low with a big commercial plane to hit the Pentagon in a special place. Somebody has studied this very well, someone has flown in this area very much.”

[Not from Tarpley's book: Six weeks later Mubarak made a similiar comment:
"I find it hard to believe that people who were learning to fly in Florida could, within a year and a half, fly large commercial airlines and hit with accuracy the towers of the World Trade Center which would appear, to the pilot from the air, the size of a pencil. Only a professional pilot could carry out this mission, not someone who learned to fly for 18 months in Florida." (source) ]

Nikki Lauda, a legendary Formula One race driver, was a pilot and the founder of his
own airline. He was asked by Jauch: “Is it easy to learn, we’ve seen that a video was
found in a car near the Boston airport, and people think that the car belonged to a
kidnapper, who had used it to bone up in advance on what the inside of a cockpit looks like. Is it so simple, for example, to learn that with the help of a computer simulator?”
Lauda judged that “these gentlemen were properly trained to fly a plane like that.” In
particular, he stressed that “you have to know exactly what the turning radius of a planelike that is, if I am trying to hit the World Trade Center. That means, these had to be fully trained 767 or 757 pilots, because otherwise they would have missed. It certainly could not be the case that some half-trained pilot tries it somehow, because then he will not hit it. That’s not so easy, coming out of a curve….If he’s coming out of a curve, then he has to know precisely the turning radius that derives from the speed of the plane in order to be able to calculate it, so that he will hit right there.”
Jauch asked which was harder to hit, the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Lauda:“Well, what impressed me is the organization of this whole operation, since without good weather it would have not been possible at all, because then you can’t see anything. These were visual flights, using VFR [visual flight rules] as we call them. And so the World Trade Center is relatively easy to find, because it is stands out so tall…. The Pentagon is another matter again, because it is a building that is relatively flat. That means, they had to be trained well enough that they had flown around in the air in the New York area, I would speculate, so they could see the scene from above of where the building is located and how you could best reach it.” To hit a flat building like the Pentagon is “an even more difficult case” than the World Trade Center.
Lauda: “That means, to fly downwards out of a curve, and still hit the building in its core, I would have to be the best trained of all. I would speculate that a normal airline pilot would have a hard time with that, because you are simply not prepared for things like that. That means, they must have had some super-training to have been able to handle an airliner so precisely.”

In the days after 9/11, a private group of US military and civilian pilots held a seminar to evaluate this crucial feature of the official story – could the hijackers have flown the planes with the requisite accuracy? After 72 hours of deliberation and discussion, they issued a press release summarizing their findings: “The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation carried out against the USA, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.”

One of the organizers of the seminar, retired Colonel Donn Grandpre, said that it would be impossible for novices to have taken control of the four aircraft and orchestrated such a complicated operation, which obviously had as a prerequisite military precision of the highest order. The seminar concluded that it was likely that the hijackers were not the ones in control of the aircraft.
One participant in the seminar was a US Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties
during the Vietnam war. This experienced combat pilot concluded that “Those birds
either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control.”
Another spokesman for the group was identified as Captain Kent Hill (USAF retired),
who was reportedly a friend of Chic Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Hill recalled that the US had already carried out multiple flights of an unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, between Edwards Air Force base in California across the Pacific to South Australia. Hill said this plane had flown on a preprogrammed flight path under the supervision of a pilot in an outside station.
Source (PDF)

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I would have too work really really hard because it is not an easy thing from my point of view.....I believe whoever did this understood what it it means to stay 10 or 5 metres off the ground with an aeroplane that weighs 110 or 120 tonnes going at 900kmh......it would just need a touch of the yoke ........and you would go off course....but you would go off course by a 100 metres or so.....not 10 metres....

It just needs a touch and there would be a movement of 100 metres at altitude.....on the horizontal axis...it is just ridicolouse....you would need a set of particular circumstances to remain so close to the ground....I believe that it is no easy thing.

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"It doesn't take that much skill; just enough knowledge to home in on a radio station in New York or Washington, and the needle (zeroes) right in," said McNicol, referring to the automatic direction finder that steers an aircraft. "You don't have to know anything about flying, other than the wings have to be level to fly straight." McNicol noted that the suspects, some of whom attended flight schools in Florida and Arizona, "probably got all the information they needed [there]." (...)

A pilot with only a couple of hundred hours experience could have pulled off the operation, concurred Richard Theokas, chairman of the flight training department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "You just need to know how to fly straight and level and keep on target," Theokas said. "These guys allowed others to take off, and they didn't have to land it." Source

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Ronald D. Bull, a retired United Airlines pilot, in Jupiter, Florida, told The New American, "It's not that difficult, and certainly not impossible," noting that it's much easier to crash intentionally into a target than to make a controlled landing. "If you're doing a suicide run, like these guys were doing, you'd just keep the nose down and push like the devil," says Capt. Bull, who flew 727s, 747s, 757s, and 767s for many years, internationally and domestically, including into the Washington, D.C., airports.(Source)

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George Williams of Waxhaw, North Carolina, piloted 707s, 727s, DC-10s, and 747s for Northwest Airlines for 38 years. "I don't see any merit to those arguments whatsoever," Capt. Williams told us. "The Pentagon is a pretty big target and I'd say hitting it was a fairly easy thing to do."