Originally Posted by
jgreen1024
Are you a pilot?
I've flown planes from Cessa 152s to King Airs, and have a little time in Boeing 737 level-4 simulators. They all have VOR receivers, and those things all work the same way. Tune the frequency, select the correct autopilot mode, and the plane will fly you there itself just in case you can't follow the visual indicator. It is just NOT that complex. I realize the flight deck of a 767 looks intimidating to the casual observer, but any private pilot could become comfortable with it with a little study. And at least some of the hijackers had simulator time in jets, so it would have been even less intimidating to them.
We also all learned in basic private pilot training how to look outside the window and follow a map. Your suggestion to ban GPS receivers makes me wonder if you are also in favor of getting rid of windows and banning maps.
I am a commercial pilot, instrument rated, airplane land and sea. Trust me, the VOR receivers in a 757 and 767 do not look anything like the ones in the Cessnas that they trained on. Sorry, but getting a 757 to follow a VOR radial with the autopilot is complex for the uninitiated. Also, I am unaware of this jet simulator time that you speak of... not saying it didn't happen, but I had not heard that before.
What I said was that I am surprised that GPS receivers have not been banned. If you will recall, I said the really important factor was the locked and hardened cockpit door and the change in previous hijacking procedures to cooperate with the hijackers.
These guys took over their aircraft several hundred miles from their eventual targets. To the best that anyone can tell, they were not particularly familiar with the territory or terrain. To think that they did this by looking out the windows, following roads and rivers, is too simplistic. To believe that the "pilot" (there was believed to be only one partially trained pilot on each plane) managed to fly a jet for the first time in his life while figuring out the VOR/autopilot, reading a map... the more I think this through, the more certain I am that they had handheld GPS receivers.
Read the government report, these guys couldn't even use the cabin intercom without inadvertantly broadcasting on the COM frequency.
And the only flight that went back to its start was the AA 757 out of Dulles which eventually hit the Pentagon, so the "take me back" scenario is not supported by any of the evidence. In fact, there is strong evidence that the pilots on UA93 were incapacitated, perhaps murdered, and laid out in the forward galley. Yet tis plane was making a bee line towards DC after doing a 180 near Cleveland.
Let's not get too hyper either way about this... I am just expressing surprise that the TSA has never disallowed the use of GPS receivers aboard aircraft by passengers. Whether they were used on 9/11 or not, they could be used in the future to track an aircraft towards a precise location. They can be used with little training and by someone who is not familiar with the aircraft systems and avionics.
Hey, I love the moving maps and using a GPS aboard airliners... I am just surprised that I can!