Did Hani Hanjour get on board Flight 77?

[paulthompson]

Here's Hani Hanjour supposedly being checked through Dulles Airport security on the morning of 9/11:



Here he is captured on an ATM video a week before (he's the one further back, in the dark shirt):



Does that look like the same person to you? Not only has he gained a lot of pounds in a few days, in my opinion, but I just noticed today that he gained a beard, too! The beard addition makes no sense, since they were supposedly travelling under their own names, using their real passports and so forth. Imagine if Hanjour got a thorough inspection and they discovered a false beard!

Hanjour is consistently described as skinny, slender, or even waif-like. For instance: "Barely over 5 feet tall, skinny and boyish, Hanjour displayed a temperament and actions that were out of sync with those of his fellow pilots..." Cape Cod Times (10/12/02)

Keep in mind that after 2 days, Ashcroft announced there were 18 hijackers, not 19. It was announced there were 4 hijackers on Flight77, not 5. Hanjour was added a day later. Why wasn't he in the original list? According to the Washington Post:

"His name was not on the American Airlines manifest for the flight because he may not have had a ticket."

He didn't have a passenger seat number, either, the only hijacker not to have one.

Then there's his flying skills, which is a long story. But in brief:

At Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., 20 miles west of Washington, flight instructor Sheri Baxter instantly recognized the name of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour when the FBI released a list of 19 suspects in the four hijackings. Hanjour, the only suspect on Flight 77 the FBI listed as a pilot, had come to the airport one month earlier seeking to rent a small plane.... However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took....Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. .....chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons.

http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story

...the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.... Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm... Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14365-2001Sep11.html

So how do we know he was on that plane? I strongly suspect someone else flew that plane. Further, the only released footage of the hijackers in the airports where they took off for their hijacked flights is footage of the Flight 77 hijackers. Yet we know they at least have footage of the Flight 93 hijackers, too, and they haven't released or discussed that. Why? I'd argue that we would find other similar visual discrepancies.