Articles like that just p!sses me off!
I think that we can agree to one thing: With the short notice that the US government got in this case, turning off all navigation aids in
the whole world would NOT have prevented the attacks on WTC and the Pentagon. And most likely it would have caused many serious incidents and probably lots of accidents too.
Surely, such a step would have at least impeded the suicide hijackers. It's likely that none of them was a particularly capable pilot. (It doesn't take a great deal of skill to do what they did, which was simply steer the planes.) Perhaps they were relying heavily on navigation aids. If so, disabling them might have prevented them from finding their targets. It might have saved a great number of lives on the ground.
The writer of the article misses one point. It would take a more "capable pilot" to perform this horrible act by using navigational aids, than using what the hijackers used: Visual reference.
It just shows that he hasn't got a clue on what he's talking about.
Nick.