Editors’ Note: We have chosen to publish this article because the author presents a logical, evidence-based case that the succession of hijackings alleged to have taken place on September 11, 2001, would have been impossible and illogical for four teams of hijackers to have carried out and that the involved aircraft must have been controlled remotely by one team. With that said, there are many particulars in the author’s thesis, such as the claim that the pilots and passengers were killed using an odorless and colorless gas, that we believe are largely conjecture. We encourage readers to distinguish the author’s core argument from the many particulars of his thesis and evaluate them separately from each other.
Response papers are welcome through June 5, 2025.
The US government was unable to produce authenticated evidence for proving the presence of the 19 alleged terrorists on board the planes on 9/11. They gave poor-quality faxed pages containing passengers’ lists. But these are not authenticated and can easily be faked. They also produced a flash player document. That is an explanatory document, but not authenticated evidence.
Without such evidence, we must ask the question: Is it possible to do the hijackings by other means? Using technology, the four aircraft could be controlled from a remote location.
The hypothesis of remote hijackings of the planes
Another possibility is the control of the four aircraft used on 9/11 by some kind of technology system. In that case, how would the hijackings be done?
As the operation is extremely important, there is no room for error. Some small modifications to the planes could be made. But there is no possibility of making big modifications to the systems of the planes; each modification needs to be tested. Such tests were impossible. Only the replacement of the human pilots by a reliable, fully tested automated system can be foreseen.
As the autopilot of the planes replaces the human pilots in normal operation, we can imagine using this system. But the alive pilots will disconnect the autopilot. Even if it is not possible to disconnect the autopilot, the power of the autopilot is always smaller than that of a human pilot. A stronger external automated pilot system must be installed inside the planes.
Any system that will be installed inside the planes could not be used if the pilots are alive; otherwise, they would find some way to intervene or even disconnect vital flight equipment. Therefore, when the automated pilot system is activated, the human pilots must be killed very quickly. That is possible by injecting an odourless and colourless gas in the cockpit and fuselage in order to kill all pilots and passengers.
Under this scenario, the only usable technology for controlling the planes is cruise missile technology that can safely find its target with excellent precision. The first production of such missiles rolled out of the production line in November 1981 (see ‘The Evolution of the Cruise Missile’, p. 187). It was fully proved in 2001. Its upgrade for being installed in an aircraft is possible. If installed but not activated, such a system changes nothing to the systems of the aircraft in normal flight.
Upon activation by military satellite communication, the fuel solenoid valve of the cruise missile can be used for opening the valve of a gas canister and injecting the gas into the ventilation and pressurisation system. The mechanical design can include a magnetic mechanical connection of the actuator motors to the flight controls. Then the system will create the movement of the hands of the pilots on the flight controls in order to guide the plane to its target. In other words, the plane becomes a cruise missile.
Two hard facts indicate the pilots were gassed by an odourless and colourless gas. In the first plane, AA11, the pilots answered an order from the traffic controller at 8:13:31. But they did not answer to the subsequent order 16 seconds later at 8:13:47. We can rule out the possible intrusion of hijackers; it would require more than 16 seconds to negotiate with the pilots. The only possible explanation is that the gas injection was started at 8:13:32 and the pilots became unconscious at 8:13:47.
The second hard fact is that from all eight pilots killed in these attacks, none of them keyed the hijack code (7500) on the transponder. One or two pilots may forget introducing this hijack code. But with eight pilots, that becomes impossible. That is possible if the pilots did not understand what was happening. That is the case when the pilots are killed by an odourless and colourless gas.
In the case of remote control of the planes, there will be one remote team who will activate the on-board cruise missile control systems by satellite communication. The system immediately starts injecting the odourless and colourless gas for killing the pilots and passengers. Within 10 seconds the pilots become unconscious and the plane becomes under the control of the cruise missile system. From that moment, the remote team will make some preliminary tests. After approval of these tests, they must give the coordinates of the target and its altitude to the control system. They must check that the plane starts flying toward its target, follow it to prevent any impact with other planes. When it is close to its target, flying in the right direction and right altitude, they must let it reach its target by autonomous flight and begin the control of the next plane.
That action by one team will create differences compared to the action by four separate teams. Let’s compare these two scenarios.
FOUR teams versus ONE team
If there are four teams of terrorists on the planes, it is expected that about a week before the event, they would hold a meeting to decide the final details of their plans. At this stage, all tickets must be reserved, confirmed and gathered. At least one person from each team must be present in this meeting. Then everyone leaves for his destination. From that moment, the four teams should no longer talk on the phone; any communication could be intercepted.
During this meeting, it is impossible to predict any likely takeoff delay, or a maximum delay, or even a flight cancellation.
Let’s imagine that they boarded their respective planes, the flights had reasonable delays of about 10 to 15 minutes, and that the planes took off as normal. After takeoff, it is impossible to get any contact with other teams to set up any last detail; communications with other teams will not be possible. Each team must manage their own plane and get it to its target as soon as possible to avoid being intercepted by US air defences.
As the time is limited, each team must act as soon as possible. The only similarity we can expect among the four aircraft is the time gap between takeoff and deviation would be similar. The first aircraft, AA11, deviated from its intended route 15 minutes after takeoff. That can change from 10 to 20 minutes.
Using the actual takeoff times, 7:59, 8:14, 8:20 and 8:42, we can draw a possible time graphic of the planes, as shown in Figure 1. The time gap between takeoff and deviation from the intended route is 15 minutes for all flights. The remaining flight time is estimated according to the remaining distance to each target. All hijacks would be finished by about 9:13.

If the last plane, UA93, also had a normal delay of about 10 to 15 minutes (real value 42 minutes), it would hit its target at about 8:47. Figure 2 shows this sequence. All four planes would have crashed between 8:30 and 8:50, within a time gap of 20 minutes.

If one team controlled all four planes by using an upgraded cruise missile control system, how would they act? There are four planes to be controlled in top-secret and extremely reliable manner. It would not be acceptable to have any of the planes miss their target or fail to be hijacked.
In such an action, the main persons are obviously the ones who control the planes. To ensure redundancy in the event of illness but also maintain secrecy, the team would have likely been a small number of people. The number of persons assigned to controlling the planes could be as low as two or three.
The control of the plane is made by satellite communication with the cruise missile control system. The controllers connect to the system, give some orders to the system, and they get some feedback from it.
With such a control system, the team that controls the planes can manage only one plane at a time. Otherwise, they could mix airplanes and give erroneous orders intended for one plane to another. In order to prevent any mistakes, the work of these persons must be made as simple as possible. This means that the sequence of the events must be prepared in advance and that each aircraft must be managed from the beginning to the end before starting the work of another aircraft.
The work of this team ends when the plane has its target coordinates, it is flying autonomously toward its target, and it is close to its target. That means the work of this team ends some minutes before the impact of the plane. To reduce the total time of the action, the work of the following aircraft must be started immediately after the work of the preceding aircraft ends, which is some minutes before the impact.
Controlling the airplanes in this manner will mean initiating the deviation of the next plane some minutes before the impact of the preceding plane. In this scenario, the hijacks will be made sequentially one after the other. We can easily check this on basis of the actual flight times of the planes.
Succession of the hijacks
To verify these facts, we need takeoff, deviation and crash times of the planes. An accuracy of two minutes is enough and will have no consequence on the conclusions. Takeoff times are relatively well known, respectively 7:59, 8:14, 8:20 and 8:42 am. The crash times of the planes are also relatively well known, respectively 8:46, 9:03, 9:38 and 10:03.
The actual hijack of each plane begins with the deviation from its intended route. Detailed investigation on basis of communications with the pilots and radar routes of the planes gave the times of 8:14, 8:42, 8:54, 9:35. The table below gives all these times.
Plane # | Flight | Takeoff | Deviation | Impact | Takeoff to deviation gap | Impact to next deviation gap |
1 | AA11 | 7:59 | 8:14 | 8:46 | 15 | -4 |
2 | UA175 | 8:14 | 8:42 | 9:03 | 28 | -9 |
3 | AA77 | 8:20 | 8:54 | 9:38 | 34 | -3 |
4 | UA93 | 8:42 | 9:35 | 10:03 | 53 |
The times between takeoffs and deviations from the intended route are successively 15, 28, 34 and 53 minutes. There is nothing constant that could suggest an action by four teams of terrorists. Especially the delays of 34 and 53 minutes are counterproductive to the mission, because it increases the time and distance they would need to reach their targets.
The time gaps between the impact of a plane and the deviation of the next plane are -4, -9, -3 minutes. Some minutes before each impact, the next plane deviated from its intended route. That is fully consistent with the control of the planes by one team using a cruise missile control system.
The graphic shown in Figure 3 gives the actual flight times. The red bars represent the portions of the flights after deviation. Their succession shows that the hijacks were made sequentially one after the other.

Is it possible to make this sequence by four separate teams?
- The succession could not be decided upon in advance because they could not anticipate delays. This is compounded by the fact that the UA93 team waited 53 minutes to hijack the plane. Were they going to wait 93 minutes if the plane had not been delayed?
- The succession could not be coordinated in real time because it would be impossible for the teams to call each other, and it wouldn’t be clear which team the previous team should contact.
- There is no reason for the hijackers to do it in succession when they need to reach their targets as quickly as possible. The 9/11 Commission Report offered no explanation for why the alleged hijackers on UA175, AA77 and UA93 waited as long as they did to hijack the planes.
Figure 4 shows the routes of the four planes as they were published by USA Today in the days following the attacks. The times at different places of the trips were added. The shortest straight routes that should be used by the four terror teams have been added. Later, the actual routes were published in the official report of the 9/11 Commission. Except some details that we do not use here, these routes are globally consistent with the publication of USA Today.
Comparing the actual routes to the shortest straight routes, we can see that the actual routes have no consistency with the most logical routes of four teams of terrorists. At the 8:14 deviation time of AA11, there is no reason to rotate right when the Twin Towers are to the left. There is no reason for UA175 to wait 28 minutes before deviation and go over its target before coming back. There is no reason for AA77 to wait 34 minutes before deviating and travel so far from its target before coming back. There is no reason for UA93 to wait 53 minutes before deviating and travel so far away from its target before coming back.
We can say with certainty that is impossible four separate teams of terrorists would hijack the planes in this succession. That also means this succession of the hijackings proves that the four aircraft were controlled by one remote team. The official story of four separate teams of Muslim terrorists is false.

WTC 7 as location of remote team
Where was this single remote team acting from? One can hypothesize they must be close to the Twin Towers in order to see the events in live and check the precision of the first impact and the first demolition sequence. That means they must have a clear line of sight to the first plane entry hole and be far enough from the first demolished tower. All these conditions are met if this team was inside WTC Building 7. This building was also owned by Larry Silverstein. The need to destroy the evidence of this team’s presence inside the building would also provide a plausible explanation for why WTC 7 was demolished later.
Executing the hijackings of the aircraft
Having demonstrated that the succession of hijackings is far more consistent with control by a single team, the following is a probable scenario of how the hijackings were executed by one team.
7:59: AA11 takes off. It is a 767-200 with 87 people on board.
8:13:29: Air traffic controller Peter Zalewski asks the pilot of AA11 to turn 20 degrees right. Two seconds later, at 8:13:31 the pilot answers and accepts. Just at this moment the cruise missile control system is activated.
The aircraft control team was already in communication with the cruise missile control system. They were also listening to the air traffic controller, Peter Zalewski. They prepared the activation command on the screen. When the pilots of AA11 answered the 8:13:29 order of Peter Zalewski, they pressed the “Enter” button to activate the system. The system mechanically connects to the flight controls. Colourless and odourless military gas is immediately injected into the cockpit. Within 10 seconds, the pilots are unconscious. It will take one to two minutes to kill all the passengers.
8:13:47: Leaving five seconds additional time, the controller Peter Zalewski asked the pilot to climb to 35,000 feet. But the pilots did not answer. That confirms the system worked well, injecting the gas in the cockpit and killing the pilots. The remote team gives the order to rotate 20° right.
Why this rightward deviation? After activation of the system, they must first verify that the plane reacts as expected to the given commands. In any case, they will not send the plane directly to its target without checking that everything works well.
The main difference between a cruise missile and a 767 aircraft is the size and the reaction time. A cruise missile is small and can rotate quickly. A 767 aircraft is much bigger; it rotates much more slowly. This difference requires changing some settings in the closed loop guidance parameters in order to ensure the precision of the impact to the target.
After the first routine checks of the cruise missile control system, they will have to sharply rotate the plane and measure its reaction. On basis of the amplitude and wavelength of the oscillations, the new actual and precise guidance parameters will be calculated. This test will take some time. Therefore, the plane must be sent away from the target to allow sufficient time to perform this test.
8:26: They give a sharp rotation order to the plane. Some oscillations appear immediately after this rotation. Figure 5 shows the extract of the route of AA11 from the official 9/11 Commission Report. The oscillations following this rotation are more visible in Figure 5 than in Figure 4. After this time, the route of the plane is much more stable; there are no more oscillations.

8:40: AA11 is near its target. In a few minutes it will impact the North Tower. The last plane, UA93, was scheduled to take off at 8:00, but it was still on the ground. If this aircraft had taken off normally with 10 to 15 minutes delay, it would be too far when the team could handle it at 9:35. In this case, it could not make the trip back, not even to its actual crash position. It has been delayed in order to allow the team to manage it when they have finished their work on AA77. The maximum possible delay time is defined by the first plane crash; this last plane must be airborne before the first impact. The order is given, and UA93 takes off at 8:42.
8:42: Flight AA11 is close to its target, the team finished their settings and it moves towards its target with great precision and good altitude. The team have finished their work on this plane; they activated the cruise missile control system installed on board flight UA175. They turned it southward to verify that the system works and the aircraft responds to the orders.
The plane of UA175 is the same model as that of AA11. The same closed loop control parameters can be used on UA175. The verification that the aircraft responds to the orders is enough. Then they can quickly send the plane to its target.
8:46: As the team was inside the WTC 7, AA11 flew above them and impacted the North Tower in front of them. They saw the plane impacting the building live. Some team members began measuring the results of the impact of AA11.
8:49: They got the results of the measurements of the impact. The aircraft impacted the North Tower in the middle of the building’s façade. The precision of the impact was perfect; the system is reliable and precise.
Having seen the excellent results of the impact of AA11, we can imagine that they became euphoric, in full happiness of the successful impact. They now had total confidence in cruise missile control system. They immediately gave the coordinates of the centre of the South Tower and the intended impact altitude to the next plane. This altitude was also chosen after careful consideration. They gave a lower altitude in order to justify the collapse time difference between the two towers. They must first demolish the farthest secondly impacted tower in order to not have debris fall on WTC 7, where they are located.
8:50: UA175 deviates toward the South Tower that it will hit at 9:03. Let us remember the sharp rotation made by UA175 just before it hit the South Tower. What happened and why? It is obvious that human pilot can also do this. But we need to control how the cruise missile control system would react in this case.
The perpetrators of the attacks prepared everything to make only one time the closed loop guidance control parameters setting. They had to copy the settings of the first aircraft into the second. But this copy would create an imperfection by the weight difference of the planes. In addition, the distance between the target and the last deviation of this plane was much smaller than for AA11. Consequently, the control loop was not stabilized enough. There were still some small oscillations deviating a little the aircraft from its target. When the plane was close to its target, the control system saw it and turned the aircraft to the maximum in order to hit the target. This is a normal behaviour of the closed loop control of the cruise missile control system.
The fact that the second impact nearly missed its target probably removed the euphoria of the team. They probably became aware that this is not a virtual game and they must be careful. So, with the following aircraft, they will have to manage it more carefully.
8:52: Before this second impact, but after verifying that UA175 began turning toward the South Tower and it lowered its altitude, they began the action of the third plane, Flight AA77.
8:54: Flight AA77 deviated from its intended route. The last communication with the AA77 was made at 8:50:51.
The first two planes impacted the Twin Towers, which were 1300 ft high. The altitude precision of a bad GPS sensor, even +/-60ft, was good enough to hit the towers. But AA77 was scheduled to impact the Pentagon at about 10 ft above ground; the left engine was about 1 ft above ground. Such low impact altitude required about 1 inch altitude precision. It is impossible to make the impact of the Pentagon with a regular flight that was modified to install a cruise missile control system using only a GPS sensor. It was necessary to have a second military radar type altitude measurement, as used in the cruise missiles for the last approach. The sensing surfaces of such a sensor must be outside the aircraft fuselage and were not possible to install on a regular aircraft by making a hole in the fuselage. It was necessary to use a specially prepared aircraft for this attack. That required crashing the original plane elsewhere and using another aircraft for impacting the Pentagon.
In a previous article, we identified the model of the aircraft that impacted the Pentagon as a 737-400 (see https://ic911.org/debated-topics-forum/forum/identification-of-the-plane-model-that-impacted-the-pentagon/ ). Such a civil aircraft painted with American Airlines colours could be used. It will not be recognised by the eyewitnesses around the Pentagon. How did they do it?
The 9/11 Commission Report (page 25) tells us that the plane reduced its altitude and cut its transponder. It disappeared from radar screens for 8 minutes 13 seconds.
During this time, AA77 was crashed to the ground at low speed in the little inhabited area of West Virginia. The specially prepared 737-400 aircraft is made airborne and sent toward the Pentagon that it hit at 9:38.
9:34: This 737-400 was heading for the Pentagon at the right altitude, the team completed their work on it and activated the cruise missile control of the last plane, UA93.
9:35: UA93 deviated from its intended route.
9:38: The specially prepared 737-400 aircraft, pretending to be AA77, impacted the Pentagon.
9:58 to 10:03: Before the crash of UA93, the team executes some chaotic rotations to make people believe there was a fight on the plane. This is a good movie script prepared in advance.
10:03: UA93 was crashed to the ground near Pittsburgh.
Conclusions
The analysis of the takeoff, deviation and impact times of the planes shows that the hijackings were made in a successive manner. In the case of four separate teams on the planes, such succession of the hijacks has no logic and it is impossible to do. But in the case of a technological control of the planes by one remote team, the succession of the hijacks becomes mandatory. This succession of the hijackings proves that the planes were controlled by one team from a remote area.
All evidence is consistent with control by one remote team. The flight times, the flight routes, the communications with air traffic control, and the models of the planes are all consistent with each other. All investigation of 9/11 must consider this aspect of one remote team controlling the planes. All theories that are not consistent with control by one team must be rejected.