Thread: 9/11 mobile phone calls

I hope this is the right place to put this. I have read a few books and articles which dispute the official account of the 9/11 attacks. One of the things they question are the mobile phone calls. On the day several mobile phone calls were apparently made from flight 93 and I think another plane. However some of the things I have read suggest that it was not possible for mobile phone calls from the planes to connect to people on the ground. The planes were at normal cruising altitude. What is the truth of this? Could ordinairy mobile phones have been used to call people on the ground from the planes? Can someone comment. Thanks.

Actually all 4 planes had at least one cell phone call made from them.

http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/e...honecalls.html


Here's a reference that will probably help.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone.htm


The main problem is that, at 30,000 feet, you're always at least 5 miles from a tower, but I'm not sure the terrorists chose to fly at that altitude. They might have dropped to much lower altitudes, and they were most certainly flying low when they entered NYC and began aiming themselves at the WTC towers.

The truthers seem to assume that the flights flew at FL350 till impact. And although many of the flights turned off their transponders (thus meaning ATC and radar could not track their altitude properly) I think it's pretty obvious that they were using visual land marks by looking out the window to navigate. (It's not like you can program "World Trade Centre" into the navigation computer, just the general area of "New York, probably LGA or JFK or EWR" then look for the hudson river and Manhattan Island.).

As far as mobile phones go I have accidently left a mobile phone on during a flight and received a text message at about 10,000ft. That said... when flying Cessna 172's around I'v even deliberately left my phone on in the expectation of receiving a text message while airborne, but in that case we are usually below 6000ft. Not FL350 to be sure, but certainly within the realms of a poorly trained individual flying around in a 757 trying to spot landmarks. ("We're flying low, too low, real low" is a quote I'v heard from one of those mobile phone call transcripts)

UAL175 (The one we all saw on TV hit the WTC from 100 different angles) actually left it's transponder on and it deftinatley did begin to descend before it was over New York. In fact it nearly hit another non-hijacked airliner on the way down.

Some claim that Mobile phones were different in 2000 than they are now (This has only started to come up since about 2005 onwards)

I then just go on and say that not only do I still use the same physical SIM card that I had since 1998 without ever changing or breaking it once since that date, but I still have the actual telephone I was using on that day and use it as a spare. It's an old thing that can only do 160 characters in a text message and only display a single line of text at a time. I keep it for no good reason. I also worked for a large international telephone company for a long time in a support/systems role, and one of the resources I have available to me is a map with the footprint areas that we have service and from which transmitters. One of the transmitters I often get calls about is near the sea on a fairly high hill. There's a black spot that covers part of a suburb about 3 miles from that point. However you are actually able to get reception over 10 miles (nautical miles) from shore. Checked that myself . 5 miles is a good general rule, but line of sight is far more important. And as far as I can tell, there are no hills, buildings or electricals between most transmitters and 35000ft directly above them. It's not so much the range that would be the problem to get a signal, it'd be the fact your flying at 400+ Miles an hour and it'd tend to drop the call in many cases as you left the lateral range of the cellular transmitter and entered the range of the next. It might make 1 or 2 transfers, but if you're fast enough, it won't have time to register the exchanges and your call would keep on dropping off as the handover protocol lagged behind your location.

In my opinion you could make a call, but I doubt it would last more than 60 seconds at a time (Shorter the faster you are going) and only if your call connected early in your 'flyover' of the specific cellular transmitter.

This of course does not apply to the AirPhone system which United airlines had installed since the 1990's. 2 phones available in each row of economy, 1 per seat i first. Credit card activated.

Thanks for that extensive reply. It seems that luck and the relative position of the plane has a lot to do with it.