UNITED 93 Question

[Taverner]

This is something that has been bugging me for years - from when I first heard the story and now re-ignited by the recent movie.

OK...so according to the story, Todd Bingham called his mom from his cell phone from thousands of feet in the air. Now have you ever tried to use your cell on a plane in the air?

I did (yes, bad Taverner, bad bad, never do that, etc...) and it WILL NOT work until you are near the transponders, e.g. no more than say a couple hundred feet of the ground. I put this to the test on my last business trip and found that I did not get reception until the plane was landing.

So how in the name of fuck did Todd Bingham call his mom? How? The only way would be to use one of those sattelite phones...

Also, there were supposed to be a number of victims on one of the other flights that crashed into the WTC who called their loved ones from phones. This I can *kind* of beleive as NYC has transponders on top of the skyscrapers and it would be a lot easier to place the call. HOWEVER, the plane still would have had to have been flying really low for calls to be made. Doing so does not make sense as the plane encounters much more air resistance and the hijackers wouldn't have been able to control the planes as well.

[mike_c]

1. there was a guy who flew around with a cell phone after 9/11...

...to test precisely that and he proved pretty conclusively that it was not possible to use a cell phone reliably from cruising altitude-- I'll look for the info....

on edit: I found this: http://www.physics911.net/cellphoneflight93.htm

[Taverner]

4. EXACTLY!

I've done this test myself a few times too...and the bars don't go up until you have almost landed...

[Beaverhausen]

5. Do we know what altitude the plane was?

[Taverner]

9. Probably not, but Todd Bingham allegedly called his mom

soon after the plane was hijacked...so it's more than likely they were above cruising altitute.

And FTR, even when below cruising altitude, I have never been able to use my cell phone. And it's a pretty good phone...Cingular network too.

[dogday]

35. They were in PA and they were supposed

to be going to the White House so I would think they were at cruising altitude....

[Shilohtd16]

2. i have made calls from a plane

as long as you are below cruising altitude it usually works.

[Bluebear]

11. Isn't that forbidden?

[Taverner]

15. Um...yes

:spank:

[Shilohtd16]

17. ...yes

but it was for good reasons (college apps etc)

[Bluebear]

36. The law is the law. Too bad the President doesn't know that.

Of course, he eavesdrops illegally for "good reasons" but that is not right either.

[bigwillq]

13. Hello.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[FloridaPat]

21. From your cell phone? What cruising altitute?

[Shilohtd16]

25. it was on a corprate jet

and it was flying at 25,000 i think

[FloridaPat]

39. They had to have a system on the plane that would allow you to

use your cell phone. They're starting to put them on commercial flights now. No way your cell phone can work at 25,000 ft without a lot of help.

[Avalux]

3. There are a lot of questions.

Have you ever been to the 9/11 forum of DU? Suffice it to say, not everyone believes the *official* story. :hi:

[Taverner]

6. Yes I've read many of the questions

Some are very valid (why did WTC 7 collapse? Why didn't fighter jets scramble to intercept the other planes? Why were the FBI able to identify all of the hijackers within hours of the attack, yet were powerless to prevent it?)

and some are ludicrous (Did a rocket bomb the pentagon?)

My guess is that for every valid question, there has been a certain amount of *noise* put out to discredit them.

[slybacon9]

7. For the information on the chances of this actually working...

you need to watch Loose Change...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5137581991288263801&q=loose+change

the cell phone calling will be the least of your questions after that.

i fly a lot... have a great phone (5 years later, better reception and better coverage) and i've tried every time... to no avail.

[Taverner]

10. I would love to see that movie

I've heard great things about it - but its one of those I've never been able to download

[slybacon9]

12. how come?

it's right there on google for all to watch, no?

the link i sent above, no workie for you?

[Taverner]

14. That link worked - THANKS!

I had tried to bittorrent it and couldn't earlier

[Selatius]

8. People who ask too many questions are anti-American and love...

terrorists. Why don't you go back to your queer hippie commune and burn flags there?

:sarcasm:

[bigwillq]

16. In that movie that was on A&E--

I believe that some of the passengers were using phones near their seats, that the plane was already equipped with. Not cell phones.

[El Supremo]

18. Bingo! n/t

[Taverner]

19. Airphones

And yes - this I could believe. But the news reports then (and at the time) specifically said cell phones. And apparently in the movie Todd Bingham uses a cell.

[bigwillq]

26. Airphones--

Didn't know the proper name. Makes sense. Yes, all reports talk about is cell phone, which is way I found it strange that they were using airphones in that movie. I can't remember if they showed Bingham on his cell or not. I think they did.

We will never know what happened. Maybe the family wants to for a kind of closure. I hope the passangers did fight back. At least they went out with a fight. But we will never know.


If they want to make a movie about it, that's fine. They make movies about everything nowadays. Doesn't surprise me that they're making a movie(s) about 9/11.
But in situations like this one, we will never know. Facts are not always going to be accurate in any case. I guess we can only believe what we want to believe because none of us really know what happened.

[FloridaPat]

20. I thought only one person talked to someone they knew. Most people

then talked to strangers, which I thought was a little wierd. Yes, you're right about the cell phones. I also heard there were no phone charges from the plane phone on people's credit cards.

[Taverner]

22. According to Ted Olson (we know how much we can trust him)

His wife Barbara called him.

[FloridaPat]

23. Yes, my thought exactly.

[mandyky]

30. Barbara Olson wasn't on Flight 93

She was on the Pentagon plane, and I am not sure she called from the air (according to TO). The DC plane may not have reached altitude to be out of range for cell phoning.

Also, some people used "plane phones" - not sure if in flight phones are cellular or satelite.

[uppityperson]

24. cell phones only work if you call strangers, see?

:rofl:

[Behind the Aegis]

27. My thoughts on this...

We don't know what kind of phone Mark had. Perhaps it was a satellite phone, perhaps it was an airfone, perhaps it was in the last few minutes (meaning the plane was low enough to get a signal). What sticks in my mind is what possible reason would his mother have to lie about the call?

Two years ago, my mother got a call from one of my brothers. He was flying to Turkey for a military meeting. He called my mother from the plane. Of course, unbeknownst to my mother at the time, my brother's plane was about to crash, so he called to say good-bye to my mom (without letting her know what was happening until a day later). Thankfully, the pilot was able to make an emergency landing and no-one was seriously injured. I can tell you that my mother didn't lie about that call!

I doubt we will ever know what really happened that day, but as far as I am concerned, Ms. Bingham got that call from her son and in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that important if she didn't?

[bigwillq]

28. Well she shouldn't lie

about getting the call or not.

You say this

"What sticks in my mind is what possible reason would his mother have to lie about the call?"

but then this

"Ms. Bingham got that call from her son and in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that important if she didn't?"


It is important if she got the call or not.

[Behind the Aegis]

29. So are you inferring she has lied?

You say "It is important if she got the call or not." and I still assert, "...in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that important if she didn't?"

I don't understand the point of the selective quoting you did.

[bigwillq]

31. I don't think she lied.

I hope no mother would. I will never know the real truth about what happened on that flight or in the aftermath.


My point to you is---

you say what reason is there for the mother to lie.
But then say in the grand scheme of things is it really all that important if she didn't (get the call)?


It is important if she got the call or not. If she didn't get the call and she is lying about it, then that is a very important fact to know.
If she really did get the call, that's a very important fact to know.


In the grand scheme of things--it is important.

[ScreamingMeemie]

32. My mother would lie about something like that.

She has always told "fibs" all the way up to outright lies to inflate her involvement in any given family crisis. Yes, unfortunately, there are people out there like this.

[Balbus]

38. Because the mother was in on it.......

What was your mother doing the night before 9/11....

[Behind the Aegis]

33. it is MARK Bingham, not Todd!

You have mixed names. Todd (Beamer) is of "Let's Roll" fame and called his wife and I believe a local 411. Mark Bingham was the gay rugby player.

Edited to add this link: http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/chart.html#Mark_Bingham

I don't know anything about that site, but I thought it may shed some light.

[Nederland]

34. You miss one big thing

Verifying this is very, very easy.

If Todd made the call there would be a cell phone record. If he didn't, there wouldn't be. Given the amount of time this idea has been kicked around (just check out the 9/11 forum) I would be shocked to find out nobody had ever asked for proof. Just to be clear, I don't know either way. I'm just saying this shouldn't be any great mystery. Either there is a cell phone record of the call or there isn't.

BTW, I work for a Telecom company and the number of people that would know if a fake record were added to the database is large enough to invoke the "conspiracies involving large numbers of people are usually groundless" principle.

[Taverner]

37. Just watched "Loose Change" and

There were NO cell phone records of ANY of the cell phone or airphone calls made.

None.

[Nederland]

40. Loose Change is Wrong

I did some research on this. There were over 30 calls made by passengers on that flight, and there ARE tapes of 911 calls that were made. Simply put, that is way too large a number of calls and recordings of conversations to fake, making the number of people that would have to be involved in the conspiracy ridiculously large.

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=ua93

[Taverner]

41. Understood - but tell me then

How can I make a cell phone call from a plane? Not counting the airphone...

[Nederland]

43. Might not have been a cell phone

Several of the people that called friends/family said that they were on the airplane phones that are on the backs of airplane seats, Mark might have been one of them.

<snip>

From Flight 93, Mark Bingham calls his mother and says, “I’m on a flight from Newark to San Francisco and there are three guys who have taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb.” In an alternate version, he says, “I’m in the air, I’m calling you on the Airfone. I’m calling you from the plane. We’ve been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb.”

<snip>

[Opusnone]

42. Does anyone remember reports from the ground

that the callers from the hijacked planes didn't sound like themselves? In other words, they sounded "robotic"?
I read that online within 2-3 days after, and then the story disappeared. Before you start shouting "Tinfoil hat!" there were no 9-11 sites up that early. It was all news and online journals.
As far as this movie is concerned, sinice there were no survivors, it is full of poetic license. I don't need to see it.

[NYCGirl]

44. That's the way you should on a satellite phone, FWIW. NT

[shance]

45. Does anyone remember the quote, "Mom, this is Todd Bingham".

What's wrong with this "quote"?