Mystery second plane in Cleveland identified! [View All]

[Woody Box]

In an extra edition, the Akron Beacon Journal reported on 9/11:

The mind-numbing chaos that descended with the terrorist attacks on the Northeast United States spread this morning to Northeast Ohio.

Cleveland Mayor Michael White said at a news conference this morning that a Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport because of fears a bomb was aboard.

He reported that air traffic controllers could hear screaming aboard the plane.

The 200 passengers were reportedly released from the plane at 11:15 a.m., though White said the pilot was still concerned that a bomb remained.

http://de.geocities.com/woody_box2000/akronbeacon911.html

Associated Press reports about the same plane on 9/11:

A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport because of concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White.

The plane was sitting on a runway at the airport's west end with approximately 200 passengers on board. The mayor had said earlier that the plane was being evacuated, but an airport spokeswoman said the passengers remained inside. It was unclear whether any passengers had been taken off the plane.

A SWAT team and bomb unit were at the scene. However, White said, "As of this moment we do not know that this plane is in stress or duress."

The airplane landed at about 10:45 a.m., but the airport released no information about the plane's intended destination. Normally, planes of this size do not land at Hopkins.

...

White said air traffic controllers said they could hear screaming within the Boeing 767. Additional details were not available.


http://de.geocities.com/woody_box2000/ap911.html

I have shown here that this plane is not identical to Delta Flight 1989 which landed at 10:10, was evacuated at 12:30, and carried only 69 passengers. So the identity of the mystery plane was unclear until now. An AP message which has become famous now (via Loose Change) claimed it was United 93.

But finally someone has come forward and speaks out: it was a KC-135...

Vernon "Bill" Wessel is the director of safety and mission assurance at NASA Glenn. He was in his office the morning of 9/11 when an employee called him from home. "He says, "Bill, I don't know if this is a hoax or what, but I just saw a plane crash into the World Trade Center.'" Wessel says he hung up and raced downstairs to a conference room. Center Director Don Campbell joined him. A projector beamed the television's image onto a large screen just as United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

An emergency meeting of directors was called, and an order to evacuate NASA was issued. When Wessel learned that Delta 1989 was stuck on the tarmac at Hopkins and that it might contain explosives, he decided it would be unwise to use the front gate, closest to the airport, to evacuate the 3,500 NASA Glenn employees under his watch. E-mails and phone calls were sent out to different departments at the research facility, informing everyone to leave via the back gate. "It took about an hour and a half to evacuate everybody," Wessel recalls.

So what about the so-called Flight X?

"A KC-135 had to come back to the hangar," says Wessel, as if realizing for the first time that this aircraft may have caused some undue confusion. A team of scientists from the Johnson Space Center in Houston had flown to Cleveland on this KC-135 to conduct micro-gravity experiments. (Also known as "the vomit comet," KC-135's are used to simulate weightlessness. The plane soars to high altitudes, then falls back toward the ground, giving passengers a few seconds of zero-G experience. Scenes for the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 were filmed in one.)

The visiting scientists could not return to Houston as scheduled on 9/11 once the FAA ordered all planes to land. "After the facility closed, we had to take those scientists to a hotel." The scientists, dressed as civilians, were boarded onto shuttle buses.

http://www.freetimes.com/story/681

Okay. Now we know. A KC-135 with 200 scientists from Houston, with the pilots (or whoever) yelling and screaming in the cockpit, lands irregularly at 10:45 in Cleveland, a full hour after receiving the FAA grounding order to land at the nearest airport. :sarcasm:

Questions, anyone?