I was curious about what planes the terrorists learned to fly on and how the controls of those planes differ from the controls of a 757. I am under the impression that the controls would be completely different and much more difficult on the 757.

Apparently the terrorists didnt do so hot in flight school. Are there any pilots on this board that can comment on how they could learn on small planes yet take huge 757's directly into their targets?

Aside from the highly complex systems on the 757, it's still an airplane and flies like a Cessna 152 trainer or other similar simple trainer type aircraft.

The flying isn't too difficult, you will need to learn all the pertinent airspeed details on the 757 just like you did on the trainer aircraft.

What you get with a 757 - or F18 - pilot is someone who not only knows how to fly, but knows the aircraft systems quite well.

Put another way, most sensible light aircraft pilots could fly the 757 or F18, but where the problems come in, is when you have a systems failure and without the training you have nowhere to go.

The terrorists probably learned to fly on single engine trainer aircraft and perhaps furthered their knowledge on computer based games/flight training programs.

I do know, when I was learning to fly, there was an Arabian guy taking lessons at the same time.
He learned to fly, but was lackadaisical as well as looked down on small, but important things like the pre-flight etc.
To the point where he burned up an engine on his long cross-country (300 miles) flight because he thought a low oil level was no big deal.
And like you'd think, he walked away and was never seen again.

At the same time, there were quite a few Arabic pilots training in twin engine, retractable gear aircraft.
They trained at a light traffic long runway airport south of where I flew and north of a big controlled airport.

Sometimes when you flew down there, they would not quit doing touch and goes and had the pattern so tied up that sometimes it was a long wait to join the pattern.
(An uncontrolled, self announcing airport.)
Most pilots are very skilled, polite, professional in their attitude and good about sharing . . . to the point where they'd get out of the way if it looked like another pilot could use a break.
Not so with the student pilots from the Middle East countries.

Once in a while one of the Middle East guys would get lost right over their own controlled airport and after a few false starts, the controller would send them 10-20 miles away and have them circle until they could work them into the pattern.

A lot of them didn't care much for navigation.
Sorta made you wonder.

From what I saw in the area I flew out of was that there are a heckuva lot of Arabic speaking pilots out there.
A lot more than is realized....