As an Air Force Reserve officer, as an American citizen, and as a member of the human family, I, like you, am in shock over the attack on humanity that occurred today, taking the lives of thousands. I will have more to say on this channel in the next few days as ABC duties permit, but in the meantime, let me share what I just sent to ABC.COM:

Question: Do you have to be a skilled pilot to fly the 757/767? We're trying to understand how easy it would be for someone to just take control and fly the plane in order to crash it into a specific target.

Ans: Only a skilled pilot can takeoff, fly, and land a Boeing 757 or 767 and do it safely. It would be extremely difficult to imagine a small airplane pilot, untrained in large aircraft, initiating flight in such a big jet. But is it possible that a pilot of lesser training (smaller aircraft) could takeover in flight and guide such a jet into a specific building?

Yes, it is, but keep in mind that there is no question here that extensive, meticulous planning was behind this outrage, and if "you" are the leader of the terrorist organization planning such a crime against humanity and expending incredible sums of money and effort, would you want to leave the potential "success" of your operation to the chance that a pilot of lesser training might foul up the operation and not hit the intended target? I would think not, which logical speculation leads directly to the thought that the terrorist-pilots involved here had at least some training in or exposure to large aircraft. Again the problem is precision and certainty. The enemy here wanted to hit four targets dead on, and to do that requires quite a bit of pilotage skill in the last few seconds. A small aircraft pilot will be very unfamiliar with the aerodynamic responses of a 757 or 767, and will more than likely mishandle it in those critical last seconds.

As I said on the air awhile ago with Peter Jennings, it is also very curious and a potential clue that the two types of aircraft in today's acts of war against the United States are the only ones which have what's known as a common type rating: IE, training in a 757 qualifies you completely and legally to fly a 767. That could be coincidence, but it's probably by design.

Question: What defense does a pilot have in the cockpit if someone is trying to hijack the flight or bursts through the cockpit door?

Ans: Professional pilots have extensive training in how to handle a hijacker who wants something specific (such as transportation or money, or the opportunity to make a statement and survive). We have long known, however, that there is nothing but grave danger in the idea of either arming aircrews in order to give us the possibility of shooting a hijacker, or in otherwise fomenting an airborne struggle in the cockpit. (And If you'll recall, we had an unsuccessful airborne struggle in the cockpit of an EgyptAir 767 nearly two years ago, and the captain lost his battle to regain control from a suicidal/homicidal copilot.) In addition, there is no way we can so harden the cockpit door that no one could force or coerce his way in. Finally, when someone is well armed, and has carefully planned attack that includes their plan to die in the process, our defenses in a free society with a robust, accessible airline system rest almost exclusively on a combination of good intelligence and intelligent screening.

Question: What do you think a pilot would do if confronted at gun point and asked to re-route a plane? (What's the psychology of the pilot, and would he/she refuse, and are they trained to deal with such a situation?)

Ans: I can tell you quite clearly what any of some 29-thousand airline pilots would do if confronted with a gun to the head and asked to divert to another airport: we would comply. BUT, if given any indication whatsoever that the plan was to crash the airplane into anything, there would be absolutely no compliance, because to comply would guarantee our deaths and the potential deaths of many others. Given that order - fly into a building - any airline pilot would fight, or at the very least, attempt to thwart the attempt. These terrorist planners knew this, and therefore they would not have depended on the possibility of intimidating the pilots, they would have killed them or completely incapacitated them immediately. You can take this to the bank: the human organisms at the controls of each of those aircraft were not the airline pilots assigned to those flights. While I say this with full knowledge that human nature dictates that a turncoat is possible, postulating four turncoats coordinated on four different airliners going in four different directions exceeds rational probability.

Question: How common is it for an airliner to be hijacked in North America?

Ans: Hijackings are very uncommon in the United States and Canada these days because of reasonably good security procedures and because of reasonably good intelligence. But such defense systems are obviously not perfect. We stand a very good chance of thwarting any hijacker who is mentally unbalanced or simply wants money or attention. We stand vulnerable in a free and robust system to the professional suicide terrorist.

I'll have more later.

John Nance

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