Discrepency with Passenger Phone Calls and AA versus United Flights

[spooked911]

It has been found previously that the two AA flights were not listed in the BTS database as taking off whereas the two UA flights were.

I just realized something interesting related to this.

For the two AA flights (11 and 77), there was only ONE phone call from a passenger-- the famous Barbara Olson call from flight 77. This call is actually quite suspicious, and many people have wondered about its veracity.

More importantly though, for the two UA flights (175 and 93), multiple passengers made calls from each flight, at least four calls from flight 175 and over a dozen calls from flight 93.

Why such a discrepency between passengers on AA and UA flights?

Note, flight 77 probably had seat-mounted airphones, since Olson supposedly called from one.

An interesting possibility is that flights 11 and 77 never really took off with passengers, and this is why they weren't listed in the BTS database and why there so few calls.

Anyway you look at it, the lack of passenger phone calls from the AA planes is very striking.

Note, flight 11 did have two prominent phone calls from flight attendants Ong and Sweeney. But they made little reference to the passengers, and no screams were heard in the background.

[Kevin Fenton]

1. Four passengers?

Who are the at least four passengers on United 175?

PT's timeline only lists two, Peter Hanson and Brian Sweeney:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=ua175

[spooked911]

2. Yes. I was reading "9.11 Revealed" and they said the passengers of

flight 175 made several phone calls, then listed what they said. I interpreted it as four passengers, but maybe it was only two.

One odd thing is in Thompson's timeline, it talk's about Sweeneys call:
9:00 a.m.: Flight 175 Passenger Brian Sweeney Predicts Crash into Building
Flight 175 passenger Brian Sweeney calls his parents a second time, and says to his father, “It's getting bad, Dad—A stewardess was stabbed—They seem to have knives and Mace—They said they have a bomb—It's getting very bad on the plane—Passengers are throwing up and getting sick—The plane is making jerky movements—I don't think the pilot is flying the plane—I think we are going down—I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building—don't worry, Dad—If it happens, it'll be very fast—My God, my God.” People and organizations involved: Brian Sweeney

However, in the SF Chronicle article and in the 9/11 commission, this call was reported as coming from Peter Hanson. Strange that Thompson would get it so wrong. I wonder if initially this call was reported as coming from Sweeney and then it got changed later when the commission reported it as coming from Hanson?

[mirandapriestly]

3. More On Olson

Sorry this is a little off the specific question, but interesting anyway. While researching the phone calls , I came across this in The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin. :
... Theodore ("Ted") Olson, the US Justice Department's Solicitor General. He said that his wife, Barbara Olson� the well-known author and television commentator�had made two phone calls to him from Flight 77 at about 9:25 and 9:30. These conversations, as reported, said nothing about where the plane was or in what direction it was headed, but they did indicate that Flight 77 had not already crashed or exploded but had been hijacked. Flight 77, therefore at least might have been die aircraft that hit the Pentagon.

Skeptics about this identification suggest that there are at least four reasons to doubt Ted Olson's testimony. First, he is very close to the Bush administration. Besides having pleaded George W. Bush's cause before the Supreme Court in the 2000 election dispute, he more recently has defended Vice President Cheney's attempt to prevent the release of papers from his energy task force to the committee investigating the Enron scandal. Second, Olson has stated that there are many situations in which "government officials might quite legitimatetly have reasons to give false information out.">21 Third, Olsons reports about the conversations with his wife are both vague and selfcontradictory.>22 Fourth, on the other flights, telephone calls were reportedly made by several passengers and flight attendants, but Ted Olson is the only person who reported receiving a call from Flight 77. This latter fact is especially strange in light of a later report that at about 9:30 the hijackers told the passengers that they were all going to die and so should call their families. Thompson asks: "Given this announcement, why are there no phone calls from this flight except for Barbara Olson's?">23 Thompson's question, in other words, is whether there really was a call from her. This question could presumably be answered by subpoenaing the telephone records of her cell phone company, American Airlines, and the Justice Department. Any of the alternative scenarios consistent with this question would need to explain, of course, what became of Barbara Olson, and also whether it is plausible that Ted Olson would have participated in a plan with that outcome. This issue is one of the problems mentioned in Chapter 9 that would face any complicity theory about "what really happened."

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/141355.php