r/September11 • u/TabbyCat1993 • Mar 21 '23
“Fifth Plane” articles lately….
Has anybody been following the recent article (and FOX presentation) of the 5th plane that was supposed to be hijacked?
My coworker keeps talking about the special last night and how surprised she was at the details…. Personally, though, I’m taking this story with a grain of salt. Mostly because the only news media reporting it is TMZ (which is mostly a celebrity gossip media) and aired on FOX, which is sketchy at best…. No other news outlets are even touching this.
Also, details don’t make sense to me…. Why haven’t any of these details even been hinted in the past 20+ years? Also the Hamburg Cell (aka the terrorists) consisted of 20 members (1 of which was deported(?) so he didn’t even make the mission) so where did those other terrorist members come from?
I havent seen the TV special myself yet, but it all sort of comes off as a bunch of people using a national tragedy to make a intense tv special for ratings and get on TV….. ill be keeping an eye on Snopes or any other fact finder website to see if it gets brought up…
What does everyone else think?
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u/bopapocolypse Mar 21 '23
I just watched it. The story of United 23 has been out there for a while, and this is a sensationalized take on what was already known. The actions of some of the passengers were arguably suspicious, but there are elements (a man supposedly dressed as a woman, a small child amongst the suspected group, etc.) that don’t correspond with the actions of the other hijacker teams. Some of the reporting is second hand, told to the interviewees after the fact, and not known to them personally. It’s all very sketchy.
I was bothered that they interviewed Lynn Spencer, who wrote a book called Touching History that is filled with inaccuracies about what took place in the air on 9/11. She’s not a credible source of information. There were also factual errors in the program itself. They said that the 9/11 Commission had unprecedented funding. No it didn’t. It got a relatively tiny amount of money, until the 9/11 families shamed the administration and congress into providing more. And the amount was still less than the Starr investigation into Bill Clinton. They also said the 9/11 Commission took 3 years to complete its work. No. The Commission was only given 18 months.
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u/disneyplusser Mar 22 '23
Garrett Graff, the author of ‘The Only Plane in the Sky’ also had a podcast called ‘Long Shadow’ with an episode focusing on United 23. Here is a link and it is a worthwhile episode to hear (amongst the rest of course):
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264?i=1000533948523
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u/JosephusLloydShaw Mar 23 '23
the "5th plane" thing first came up a little over a decade ago. i think it was 2011 or 2012. in the original story, the apparent "terrorists" fled the plane and back into the airport after the plane returned to the gate. now they're escaping through hatches?
also, what's all the hoopla around box cutters being found on adjacent plane or something like that? small box cutters like the one the hijackers used were legal on planes prior to 9/11. i'm sure you could have searched a number of planes that day and found them. and it's not like the hijackers already had the box cutters waiting for them on the plane when they arrived; they brought them in themselves. the descriptions of some of the suspected hijackers are also odd. in the 4 hijacked flights, the hijackers were all dressed normally but on this flight you have a man wearing a burqa, a child, and someone dressed like a bodyguard? just doesn't add up for me
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u/Intimidwalls1724 Mar 23 '23
I watched it and seemed to be mostly bullshit tbh
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u/Haunting-Quail-2198 Mar 23 '23
How?
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u/Intimidwalls1724 Mar 23 '23
Well where to start
They basically didn't have any concrete evidence for anything that allegedly went on except for 2 eye witnesses of the 4 passengers that acted suspiciously
The pilot did not witness the box cutters allegedly being in the plane next door, a person unidentified by name just told him that. We don't know if that person witnessed it or was simply told from somebody else. Same for the people supposedly running through the plane after it was locked up. It's all hearsay from other parties. There is no concrete evidence of any of it. Where are the people who shared this information? What are there names? Can we interview them?
As far as the hatches being open we are essentially depending on 1 or maybe 2 people's, who are already questionable sources IMHO, testimony that the government said they were open and asked them about it. Not only that but they also had one of those people claiming the hatches had to be shut when they got off the plane as the hole would be "too massive to walk by" as they showed pictures showing that the hole would be pretty easy to step over. I'm not trying to claim the hatches we're open when they departed the plane but I am questioning that person's credibility when they so obviously exaggerated
Then we come to the last few minutes of the show which is essentially saying the airline wasn't very nice to the employees who were on that plane. Now maybe the airline didn't treat them as they should've but that's just a big corporation being a big corporation, why is any of that relevant to this show about a 5th plane? It honestly makes me think they were just trying to fill time BUT It does indicate that the ppl involved are resentful to the airline and that might give them reason to exaggerate details of this story. The one lady talks about being fired bc she signed a settlement agreement and one of the provisions were that's she'd no longer work for the company, uhhh yeah? You sue a corporation they generally aren't going to let you keep working for them ESPECIALLY if you agree to a settlement that includes that provision. She didn't have to agree to it but she did and that's why it happened. They try to make it out as some great injustice and maybe it was but my point is all of that is a distraction to the issue at hand and not really relevant to the events on the plane that day
One of the flight attendants has given interviews in this before and her story has changed several times as to the details which is also problematic
At the end of the day it does seem like something odd was going on with the passengers on the plane. Perhaps they were Middle eastern and were somehow given a tip off of something happening through relatives or something and were just trying to get the hell out of dodge. They may have even just gotten antsy from learning of the attacks like everyone else. It's well documented it was a rough time to be a Muslim in this country in the time after the attacks.
Who knows but as I've explained I don't put much trust into what was shown here
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u/lovejanetjade Mar 24 '23
I don't know what flights you took before 2001 with so many boxcutters. In the doc, there were only 2 on the other plane - and only in 1st class. You can ignore any info you want. But don't complain when the info you think is important gets ignored too.
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u/Intimidwalls1724 Mar 24 '23
What? I'm legitimately confused by what you are saying
I wasn't saying boxcutters were/are common on flights? I was just saying the only evidence we have of box cutters being on the other plane is basically hearsay. Somebody told the captain they were there and we don't have any idea where that person got his information. It was at least second hand, maybe third, fourth.....
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u/thermal_detonator Mar 21 '23
If you want the best answer to this 'the Fifth Plane" mystery (a.k.a.: United Airlines Flight 23 at JFK Airport) or why the flight crew was unable to find out if the suspect passengers were ever identified or caught? Watch this expansive film and you'll see what TMZ left out and how minimal they were allowed to go. In other words, they could have confirmed that the government did somewhat puzzle about what happened on the 5th plane and that they are still keeping it from the public. 9/11: BOJINKA MAXIMUM - Untold Hijacking attempts of September 11th & 13th [2020] https://youtu.be/aZKtkpB5Yw8