skwinty,
you ask: "What does the FDR say about the speed of the aircraft"
The FDR shows a final speed of 488 knots.
"and what would be the significance of this excess speed and barometric altitude error in relation to the weight of evidence?"
We don't know the significance - that is the problem. We suspect the high speed is causing a serious increase in recorded altitude but we can't prove it.
"This is what I am trying to understand. What will this data refute or confirm.? "
If we had the graph we could see whether it reaches to 488 knots. If it does, we could read the error correction needed and provide a corrected altitude. If it does not, we could say the plane is operating outside its calibration envelope therefore recorded altitude cannot be trusted. In that case the recorded pressure altitude is meaningless. It cannot be used to make the case that the plane flew over the Pentagon. Pilots for 9/11 Truth will be shown to be making a false argument.
CJ and skwinty,
As I understand it, the reason why selection of the position of the static port is such an art is that at different speeds the plane will have different angles of attack, thus the airstream will be deflected in different ways and produce different pressures. There may be other powerful factors like changing turbulence patterns with speed. So an altimeter in a plane cannot be treated as an altimeter on land. There are two goals: to minimize the error between the pressure in the tube and outside, and to minimize the difference between the errors at different speeds. It appears that while wind tunnel tests may be used to determine the regions where pressure is close to outside pressure, it is necessary to use trial and error experiments to refine the position and to create error tables.
So, yes, the lookup table or graph of error correction due to speed is what I am after.
Rudderrudderrat,
Vertical speed may also require a correction factor due to lag, or may not if it is compensated in some way. It is not relevant to this discussion because the descent rate at the end was not unusual so would have been corrected by the ADC.
Similarly g-force and angle of attack, which are correlated to each other, could require correction of the altimeter, however the g-force was not excessive and the angle of attack would have been small.
We are left with just the excessive air speed as the suspicious factor.