Question from an outsider
Greetings. I would like to ask a question of this group as you possess the expertise to give the best answer.
I am in not in any way involved in the commercial airline industry, and am only here because I am seeking an answer to my question. If this reason is out of line with this board, please tell me and i will bow out and exit.
The question is related to the events of 9/11, but the way I wish to pose it does not concern those events specifically, but came out of a discussion of someone's hypothesis of what had happened with AA77, the Pentagon plane.
A little background here - there are some in this country who believe that the events of that day were contrived out of a USA government-led conspiracy. Personnally, I do not believe that, and this question is not to provoke a discussion of which side to blame.
The side that believes it was a USA government-led conspiracy have varying viewpoints among themselves. There is one belief that no plane ever hit the Pentagon at all, that it was a missile strike, and another belief holds that AA77 did crash into the Pentagon resulting in the loss of life of everyone on board, but that it was a pilotless drone.
This is where I wish to focus my question. In your experiences as cabin crew and in the security level of 2001, do any of you feel it is possible, even remotely possible, that even if such an airliner could have been rigged to fly pilotlessly, could it have become airborne without the knowledge of the other crew onboard?
That hypothesis implies that the government willingly sent the paying passengers to their deaths, but I cannot see how it accounts for the cabin crew.
1. No one is going to volunteer to die in a plane crash.
2. As a paying passenger, I would not know whether the cockpit was manned or not, but I would not be content to board and sit on a plane that had no visible cabin crew.
Surely within the normal procedure there must be some direct communication between the cockpit and the cabin crew at least to just make sure "everyone's on board and the door is closed" prior to actually taking off.
Of course there are many other factors that will pop into your mind about the scenario I have presented, such as the ATC's, and other airline personnel that assist in boarding, but ignore that for the moment - assume they have been "paid off" by the government to look the other way.
The question again is, also assuming that no cabin crew voluntarily went to their deaths that day, could an entire cabin crew have been duped like the paying passengers into flying off in a pilotless plane?