Thursday, December 02, 2004

Picturing Shanksville

Example

I've gotten some questions from people who haven't been to Shanksville about what the memorial really looks like. Well here's the chain-link fence portion (all photos courtesy of Pittsburgh.com). And below is a wider view of what you see as you look out at the crash site. (Those little things off to the left are the Freedom Angles, for a close-up, look here.)

Example

Those things tacked to the fence are items of devotion, like this And then there's the writing. When I say that it's everywhere, this is what I mean. And you'll see messages of thanks like this, and other messages which will break your heart:

Example

This memorial should be left alone to live and grow, not moved aside for a federal war on terror monument.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am trying to put this as gently as possible and I beg your pardon if you may find this offensive but it has to be said. Surely you (at this blog) had to have found out at least the basic details of the Shanksville incident which brings me to my question: Doesn’t it seem more than a little unbelievable (actually downright preposterous) that a Boeing 757 would take off for a coast-to-coast flight carrying such a tiny amount of passengers?

The Flight 93 memorial site states the same passenger figures heard everywhere else: “All 33 passengers and seven crew members were killed.”
http://www.honorflight93.org/story/

Thirty-three passengers? We aren’t talking about a small business jet but a Boeing 757 airliner. It isn’t as if a Boeing 757 will only hold fifty or so passengers either. The website Airliners.net which gives specifications on commercial airliner types tells us that: “Typical passenger arrangements vary from 178 two class (16 first & 162 economy), or 202 (12 first & 190 economy) or 208 (12 first and 196 economy) or 214 to 239 in all economy class.”
http://www.airliners.net/aircraft-data/stats.main?id=101

So we are talking about at minimum a Boeing 757 being able to carry one hundred and seventy-eight passengers. Let’s assume Flight 93 was of the configuration to carry “only” 178 passengers. Meaning a hundred and forty-five seats were empty. I’m sorry but NO AIRLINE IN THE WORLD is going to have an airliner take off almost empty to ferry 33 ticket holding passengers from one coast of the U.S. to the other. It just doesn’t happen in the real world and here’s why: It would be catastrophically unprofitable. Remember that airline companies are a business and nothing more. They aren’t a charity or a government-sponsored free ride service. They are in business to make a profit for their shareholders and it would be absolutely LUDICROUS for them to waste enormous amounts of money on the fuel, on the salaries of their ground crew maintenance technicians and on the wear and tear on the airframe to be in the habit of flying a handful of people all over the place in a practically empty jet. Instead they would cancel the flight and have the ticket holders assigned to different flights going to the same destination so they can put full or almost full airliners into the air. If they were so stupid as to fly tiny amounts of passengers across the country they would have gone out of business decades ago.

This by no means is the only glaring hole in the official story of 9/11 but it’s one of them. I’m sorry but the official story just doesn’t pass the smell test. In fact it stinks to high heaven. If you really want to honor the victims of 9/11 then the only meaningful way to do so requires first figuring out that what really happened that awful morning is about 180 degrees away from the official myth you’ve been fed.

Anonymous said...

I was shocked as anyone else when I heard the news on 9-11, absolutly mortified. However I do remember thinking to myself almost immedetly, how are these airlines making any money flying so few passengers, not only on Flight 93, but the other 3 flights as well. Quickly I thought that this is something I did not want to think of at that moment, but that thought has stayed with me since.