reply to post by Rewey
3. If the terrorists were attempting to crash into the ground and had inverted the plane, would they really be concerned with correcting the
pitch to fly horizontally? Surely this means that although normal pilots in normal circumstances are CAPABLE of adjusting the pitch to help them, in
this case it would be the furthest thing from the terrorists minds, thus again making the FDR pitch angle more accurate?
I don't know WHY they chose to do it the way they did. These were not rational people.
Oh, your question: Of course they wouldn't both to roll inverted, THEN try to remain at altitude. I truly doubt any of them had any aerobatic
experience, anyway...it is extremely odd the first times you learn aerobatics, after you've been so used to "normal" flying. I'm sure by now
you've all seen the roll that "Tex" Johnson (Boeing's chief test pilot in the 1960s) did with the B707 demo, right? Not that he needed to
demonstrate the airplane's abilities, there were plenty of buyers already lined up. Of course, any pilot knows that the roll he did was a "one-g"
maneuver, but still impressive nonetheless. (At my company, MANY years before I was there, anecdote about a crew who rolled a B727 the same
way....TWICE!! They were 'deadheading' an empty -- except for cabin crew -- airplane back to Los Angeles. F/As were asleep, except ONE woke up on
the second roll, looked out the window and...well, you can guess they got into trouble!)
Back to UAL93.
These monsters felt that the jig was up. They knew they were outnumbered, and once the passengers broke in, they were dead meat. Speculating, but it
seems to me they didn't want to die at the hands of "infidels", but by their own hands, and to take victims as well. They made the decision, it
seems, that their primary target was now out of the question, being too far away.
What non-pilots don't realize is, an airplane WILL come out of the sky much, much faster in the hard roll-over and dive, than just a simple
"push-the-nose-down" stunt. Pushing forward HARD will result in 'negative' g...so what? Who cares, we're going to crash anyway...but it takes
longer, and is just not as intuitive, to a pilot (if you can ever say that crashing is intuitive...we try to avoid that...).
Also, as part of the roll to nearly inverted, IF they continued with 'back pressure' on the elevators --- (term we use for flight
controls...'pressure'...because it's how we describe it) --- by continuing the UP elevator input, while inverted, it will result in the nose
tending to go more vertical, sooner.
Besides the FDR pitch and roll information, it would be useful to find out the control wheel movements, and corresponding control surface
deflections...to determine whether they were 'pulling' back for UP elevator to "finish it off" as they said.....
