"The crew initially didn't notice the plane's speed had dropped dangerously low, sliding under 115 miles an hour, and risked going into a stall. The slowing speed set off an emergency system called a "stick-pusher," which pushes the control column down in order to send the aircraft into a temporary dive so it can regain speed and recover from a stall.Much of the initial report seems to be focusing on pilot error, pilot fatigue and a lot of focus on some idle chatter between the two pilots which is prohibited under federal rules while flying below 10,000 feet. None of which gets to the real question of why the plane lost so much speed in the first place and why the numerous warning systems and stall alerts did not seem to have alerted the pilots in time. A pilot posted this in response to the initial Wall Street Journal article:
However, Capt. Renslow tried to force the plane to do the opposite. He yanked back on the controls while adding thrust. His effort was strong enough to manually override the stick-pusher. Within seconds, the plane lost lift, bucked violently and started to roll. It slammed into a house five miles from the runway."
"The A/C was being flown autopilot. Does the aircraft have auto throttle, if so, was it being used? The article comments on computer airspeed adjustments for expected icing conditions which would indicate auto throttle. Doesn't make sense that speed would decay below minimums without either of the pilots noticing. There should have been A/C abnormal behavior plus decay in indicated airspeed before the stall. I'm skeptical of the findings."Bob Francis, an airline consultant with Farragut International, said this, "Any pilot that's got the kind of training that they'd have, to me it's almost inconceivable that when they got into a stall situation that they would pull back on the yoke."
The NTSB doesn't seem to be asking any hard questions and/or they just are not trained to think outside the box when the circumstances don't add up. It is important to question the pilot's training and fatigue levels. By all means I think more publicity needs to be given to the long hours and terrible pay that pilots get in this country. But it is clear the pilots did not fall asleep and cut the engines of the plane. So why did the plane go into a stall in the first place?
Here is an outside of the box line of questioning. How about foul play. Two prominent activists were on the plane that crashed in Buffalo and 9/11 widow Beverly Eckert, a well know 9/11 activist and founder of Voices of September 11th, had just met days prior with President Obama about the 9/11 investigation and was on her way to Buffalo for a celebration in honor of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday who died in the 9/11 attacks. There has even been some speculation that she had new evidence that she planned to present to Eric Holder in regards to the 9/11 Commission investigation. Some even go so far as to suggest that this is a shot across the bow at President Obama by the military industrial complex to back off on any number of possible investigations.
And just in case there was any doubt that directed energy weapons currently exist, Northrop Grumman is running online banner advertisements showing a laser pulse from a battleship knocking an enemy aircraft out of the sky. It is something right out of a sci-fi movie like Battlestar Galatica. If you click on the Google search results link below and look at the third result that has a web address of www.st.northropgrumman.com it will take you to a portion of the Northrop Grumman corporate website that discusses its ongoing directed energy weapons program.
Google search link.
No one should doubt then that the technology exists and if it fell into the wrong hands could take down a low flying small aircraft from the ground using a laser or directed energy pulse.
A non-lethal ray gun is already in use in Iraq by the U.S. military and basically it sends a non-lethal directed energy burst at people from a significant distance causing a burning sensation on the skin and forcing the person to get out of the way of the beam of energy. Many reading this will probably think this also sounds very sci-fi and futuristic but it has already been extensively demonstrated to the media a few years back.
This segment which aired on CBS' 60 minutes on March 2nd, 2008 shows CBS correspondent David Martin being zapped by the military's non-lethal ray gun which is described as a non-lethal weapon that can be used to disperse crowds in war zones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1w4g2vr7B4
A media report that aired months prior to the 60 minutes segment was aired on CNN where the "Active Denial System" or heat ray gun was demonstrated at Moody Airforce Base in Georgia back in January of 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFRoMUorNEc&NR
People describe the feeling of being hit by this ray as akin to feeling like your skin is on fire.
The ray gun is touted as non-lethal and that may be so but there are a number of other weapons systems that are most definitely not non-lethal and all appear to be highly effective at knocking objects out of the sky.
The Talon is an air defense system that uses a high-powered solid-state laser on a highly mobile platform. It can be used to shoot down rockets, artillery shells, mortars, and other aerial projectiles. This video below, which was distributed in June of 2007, appears to be a promotional video touting the capabilities of a jointly developed laser weapons system by Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems.
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