Some Spooky Questions for the US Air Force

A friend of ours received the message below and sent it on to the Spirit of Ma'at. It poses questions that we have not even seen asked, much less answered.

''The questions I want answered,'' our friend's correspondent writes, ''are these.''

Is it customary that Flight 11 is so underbooked?

Flight 11 was a Boeing 757/200. This plane holds 239 passengers. There were 81 passengers and 11 crew. The 11 crew members included 2 pilots and 9 flight attendants.

Is it normal that this flight would not be at capacity based on other Flight 77s that leave from Boston to LA at the same time every day?

Flights within the airline industry operate on standardized schedules. They don't make the schedules after the passengers book the flights. The only days that the schedules deviate are Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays (about 30 percent capacity). I flew out West from Florida about three months ago, and every flight I got on was either full or overbooked.

Same question of the other flights

Flight #175 had 54 passengers, the Pentagon plane, Flight #77, had 56 passengers, and the Pennsylvania flight, 38. All less than 25 percent of capacity. Why?

I don't have access to the files of AA or United, but some reporter should be able to find out this information.

Speculation: Fewer people, easier to control the situation? And the less likely that something could go wrong? I don't know, and I don't have access to AA's or United's archives and files.

Why no recon on any of the first three flights?

Four planes at once with no transponder info on the FAA or Air Force screens? All of them just showing up as blips on radar? One plane was in a ''NO FLY ZONE'' — within constantly monitored, restricted airspace.

A pilot has already remarked that when a plane deviates just a little, FAA oversight will call and/or allow for course corrections. But we are talking about planes that were miles off course. In these instances, the FAA reports it to the Air Force. But also in these instances the Air Force has already locked onto these planes, because they monitor the commercial system as well as their own, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. They have to, so that we don't have military and commercial aircraft flying into one another constantly.

In a circumstance like Flight 11, this plane was so far off course it was ridiculous, and was not responding normally to communications. It did a hard bank (90 degrees to the south) somewhere north of Albany, New York. The Air Force is supposed to at least scramble a recon aircraft into the air to monitor.

Let's look at the second plane. It was 18 minutes until it hit the second building. This plane flew over New York City, passed the city, and went to somewhere around Newark, New Jersey. At that point, it did a 360-degree bank to fly back to New York. By this time ''they'' knew that this was no accident happening. They knew that they had hijacked planes in the air.

Why were there no recon missions flown against these flights?

The Air Force had plenty of time to counter the second attack

An F-15 strike eagle flies at 1850+ nmps: that is Mach 2.5-plus.

A sidewinder missile with heat-seeking infrared guidance has a range of 18 miles. This aircraft, according to the USAF's own website, goes from ''scramble order'' to 29,000 feet in 2.5 minutes.

New York City is 71 miles from McGuire AFB in New Jersey, and 147 from Westover AFB in Massachusetts. At Mach 2, this plane could travel from the ground in New Jersey to New York City in under 7 minutes [the writer adds that he is being generous — that it actually would have taken between 2-1/2 and 3-1/2 minutes airtime for a recon flight to get from its base to New York--ed.]

If we factor in the time for the scramble order and getting into the air [2.5 minutes, as mentioned above], it would have taken only 5 to 6 minutes for an F-15 to bypass flight 175, turn, and sit at the WTC in order to wait for Flight 175 to arrive. This is far less than 18 minutes [again, the time between the first and second strikes at the WTC], and this second hijacked plane had to fly back over Hudson Bay to reach its target [in other words, it could have been safely downed over water].

How could the Air Force allow a plane to fly into the Pentagon?

Let's apply these same standards to the Pentagon plane, Flight #77. This plane was over restricted airspace . . . 40 minutes after the second attack in New York City. At some point, here, Barbara Olsen called her husband to let him know her plane had been hijacked. Mr. Olsen called ''officials,'' who now claim that they didn't know about Flight #77 being hijacked. Barbara Olsen made a second phone call to her husband [and] other passengers were FORCED TO CALL their families to tell them that they were going to die. Why would the hijackers put out this warning? The article definitely says ''forced to call'' (see ''Our Plane Is Being Hijacked'' at WashingtonPost.com).

This third plane flew over the White House, which has automatic turret-style anti-defense weaponry on top of the building. NO shots were reported to have been fired, no anti-aircraft missiles were fired. This plane, still in restricted airspace, then did a 270-degree bank to turn around and fly toward the Pentagon.

Andrews AFB is 13 miles away. This is already within the range of a sidewinder. All that was required was to put a plane in the air (maybe up to 3000 feet), lock, and fire.

Remember, it had been 40 minutes, and they already know that these planes were being used as weapons. They had already been reporting it on ABC, CBS, and NBC for 30-plus minutes. They had received phone calls from passengers, telling them that the plane had been hijacked. (By the way, what time were these cell-calls made? Before or after they entered the ''no fly zone''?)

These planes could have been knocked out of the sky EASILY, but weren't. Why?

I'm just asking. . .

It's not that I want to believe that something stinks, here. It's just that I would like credible answers as to what was/is going on.

I was in the military. As a Navy Nuclear Reactor Operator, we had to stand duty 24/7 to monitor operations. An Air Force base is constantly manned, in case of an unforeseen event or attack. They fly recon missions every single day. Some of these recon flights may be armed, and some may not, but a certain number of planes are armed at all times, and the pilots do 24-hour rotating shifts so that the Air Force can respond quickly.

The Air Force and Nuclear Aircraft Carriers constitute America's first line of defensive readiness. They were 13 miles from the Pentagon, with planes that can fly circles around a commercial jet. Were they on vacation? Or what?