Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi flies from the US to Casablanca, Morocco, and back, for reasons unknown. He is able to reenter the US without trouble, despite having overstayed his previous visa by about five weeks (see January 18, 2001). [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001; US Department of Justice, 5/20/2002] Mohamed Atta’s cell phone is used on January 2 to call the Moroccan embassy in Washington, DC. Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Hamburg associate, is also in Morocco at the same time as Alshehhi, but there is no documentation of them meeting there. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 17]
January 17, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Wires Money from US to Bin Al-Shibh in Germany
Lead hijacker Mohamed Atta uses the name variant Mahmoud Elsayed to wire $1,500 to Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. The money is wired from a Western Union office in Temple Terrace, near Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The 9/11 Commission will comment, “There is no known explanation for this transaction, which seems especially odd because bin al-Shibh had access to [hijacker Marwan] Alshehhi’s German account at the time.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 143 
; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/3/2006 ]
January 18, 2001: Overstaying Visa No Obstacle for 9/11 Hijacker Alshehhi When Reentering US
Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi is able to reenter the US without trouble, after a brief, mysterious trip to Morocco (see January 11-18, 2001), despite having overstayed his previous visa by about five weeks. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001; US Department of Justice, 5/20/2002]
January 25-Early March, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Move to Georgia and Attend Flight School
According to the FBI and 9/11 Commission, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi move temporarily to Georgia on January 25, 2001, staying briefly in Norcross and Decatur, near Atlanta. The FBI will later say the hijackers remain in the Atlanta area during February and March. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 229] According to several news reports, between late February and early March, Atta and Alshehhi twice visit the Advanced Aviation Flight Training School in nearby Lawrenceville. They pay $171 in total and on both occasions rent a small Piper Warrior plane for an hour. They are accompanied by an instructor on the first occasion, but fly alone the second time. According to the school’s owner Bruce Buell, the two are “well-dressed, polite and friendly.” Two days after 9/11 Chrissy Ross, a flight dispatcher at the school, will recognize Atta’s name when the identities of the suspected hijackers are made public. She calls the FBI, whose agents then come and take all the school’s records. [CNN, 9/26/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001] However, the FBI claims Atta and Alshehhi visit Advanced Aviation about a month earlier than news reports suggest, on January 31 and February 6. [US Congress, 9/26/2002]
February 15, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta and Alshehhi Offered Jobs as Co-Pilots with New Florida Airline
Rudi Dekkers, who owns the Venice, Florida flight school attended by 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, sets up his own commuter airline called Florida Air (FLAIR), which flies out of Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. FLAIR, which also goes by the name Sunrise Airlines, will only be in service for a couple of months in 2001, and eventually has its operating authority revoked by the Department of Transportation. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 3/3/2001; Transportation, 2/14/2002, pp. 6963 ; Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/25/2003; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Yet, at the same time as he is establishing FLAIR, Dekkers fails to pay his rent for Huffman Aviation flight school on time six months in a row, from February to July 2001, blaming this partly on tight cash flow. [Charlotte Sun, 9/13/2001] According to the 9/11 Commission, at some point in their flight training Rudi Dekkers offers Atta and Alshehhi jobs as co-pilots for FLAIR. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 38 ] Yet they are supposed to have completed training at Huffman Aviation two months earlier, in December 2000, after which Dekkers claims he never saw them again. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 227; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Considering he reportedly offers him a job with his airline, it seems odd that Dekkers later claims having much disliked Atta when he was at Huffman. He will say he thought Atta was “very arrogant,” and that “My personal feeling was Atta was an asshole first class… I just didn’t like the guy… Sometimes you have that impression from when you meet people in the field and that was my first impression.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/21/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001]
February 19-20, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Make Unexplained Trip to Virginia
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi make a brief trip to Virginia Beach, where they cash a check for $4,000 and rent a mailbox. Newsweek will later report that federal investigators believe Mohamed Atta visits Norfolk, Virginia, site of a huge US Navy base, at this time, stating, “The Feds believe that Atta was scoping out an aircraft carrier as a target.” However, the 9/11 Commission will comment, “We have found no explanation for these travels.” [Newsweek, 9/24/2001; Newsweek, 10/29/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004, pp. 7; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 229, 523; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 ] Atta and Alshehhi will return to Virginia Beach a few weeks later (see April 3-4, 2001 and around). The address of a Virginia post office box used by the future hijackers will be found in a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Pakistan in 2002, but details beyond this are unknown (see May 16, 2002). [9/11 Commission, 12/4/2003 ]
Spring 2001: Arab Man in Texas Offered Money to Take Flying Lessons; Later Claims to Recognize 9/11 Hijacker
According to his later testimony, Mustafa Abu Jdai, a 28-year-old Jordanian of Palestinian descent living in Tyler, Texas, answers a job offer posted in a Dallas mosque. He then meets with three Arabic-speaking men who offer to pay him to take flying lessons in Texas, Florida, or Oklahoma. He declines the offer. On September 13, 2001, two days after the 9/11 attacks, Jdai will call the FBI to relate his story. From FBI pictures, he recognizes hijacker Marwan Alshehhi. However, the FBI takes him into custody for overstaying his visa. The FBI says he invented his story and failed a polygraph. Although he is married to an American woman, he will be detained for several months and deported. [Time, 10/28/2001; Washington Post, 11/4/2001; Watch, 8/2002, pp. 16 ]
Spring-Summer 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Allegedly Receive Extra Training on Large Aircraft
According to an associate of the 9/11 hijackers, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and flight school owner Rudi Dekkers, the hijackers have more training on large jets than the FBI will disclose. The FBI will say that the four hijacker pilots never fly real large jets before 9/11 and have a total of approximately 17 sessions on large aircraft simulators, mostly on older models: 
Both Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi each take two sessions lasting 90 minutes on a Boeing 727 simulator and one session on a simulator for a Boeing 767, the type of aircraft they fly on 9/11 (see December 29-31, 2000); Ziad Jarrah, who flies a Boeing 757 on 9/11, has five sessions on 727s and 737s (see December 15, 2000-January 8, 2001); Hani Hanjour, who flies a Boeing 757 on 9/11, practices for a total of 21 hours on a Boeing 737-200 simulator (see February 8-March 12, 2001).
When he learns what the FBI believes is the extent of the hijackers’ training, bin al-Shibh will complain in a fax sent to a reporter after 9/11: “How do aviation experts evaluate the skill with which the aircraft were flown, especially the Pentagon attack—accurate and professional as it was? Is it credible that the executers had never before flown a Boeing? Is it credible they only had some lessons on small twin-engine aircrafts and some lessons on simulators?” Referring to the period in early 2001 after the pilots spend a few hours practicing on simulators, bin al-Shibh will say, “What they needed was more flying hours, more training on simulators of large commercial planes such as Boeing 747s and Boeing 767s, as well as studying security precautions in all airports.” However, apparently bin al-Shibh does not mention exactly when or where such additional training took place, if in fact it did. [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 24-6, 38, 134] Interviewed two days after 9/11, Dekkers, at whose flight school Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi initially trained (see July 6-December 19, 2000), will comment, “After the training they had here they went to another flight school in Pompano Beach and they had jet training there, simulator or big planes, but there is where they conducted the training to do what they had to do.” Dekkers will say that he has heard this “from several directions.” However, the Pompano Beach school is not named. [Dekkers, 9/13/2001]
March-April 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Visits Tennessee Airport; Asks About Nearby Chemical Plant and About Buying Plane
Two Middle Eastern men believed to be 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi land a small plane at Martin Campbell Air Field, near the small town of Copperhill, Tennessee. Danny Whitener, a salvage-car dealer, is tending his plane at the time. The pilot, who calls himself “Mo,” speaks to Whitener for about 15 minutes, aggressively questioning him about a nearby chemical plant and what chemicals are kept there, about a nearby dam, and about two nearby nuclear power plants. According to Whitener, the pilot, who after 9/11 he is convinced was Mohamed Atta, tells him their plane is rented, and that they have flown from Lawrenceville, Georgia, which is about 60 miles south of Copperhill. This would concur with reports of Atta and Alshehhi twice renting a Piper Warrior plane from a Lawrenceville flight school around this time (see (January 25-Early March, 2001)). However, Whitener says their plane on this occasion is a Cessna, which has a very different design to a Warrior. About a month later, according to the airport’s manager John Rutkosky, a man resembling Atta again arrives, this time in an expensive-looking sports car, and inquires about buying a plane. [Associated Press, 10/19/2001; WBIR (Knoxville), 10/19/2001; Dawn (Karachi), 11/25/2001; Washington Post, 12/16/2001]
April 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Alshehhi Possibly Enters Cockpit during Flight
Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi possibly enters and photographs the cockpit of an American Airlines Boeing 757 during a flight from Boston to Los Angeles. This is according to a flight attendant working in first class, whose account is mentioned in a 2002 FBI document about the 9/11 attacks. She will claim that Alshehhi approaches her while boarding, tells her he has recently received his pilot’s license, and asks to see the cockpit. Later in the flight, he meets and speaks with the pilot, and possibly photographs the cockpit. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002]
