Word: pilots
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They were not, it seems, alone in their training. Waleed Alshehri, in his mid-20s, had graduated in 1997 with a degree in aeronautical science and a commercial pilot's license from the prestigious Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., where nearly a quarter of all commercial pilots train. He surely knew how to fly the large aircraft the terrorists planned to ram into their targets. He was on American Flight 11 with Atta. Abdulaziz Alomari told his Vero Beach landlord in July 2000 that he was a Saudi commercial pilot when he moved in with a wife...
...back as 1996, at least two other men were following a similar course. Hani Hanjour, another of the eventual hijackers, was working with a CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. By 1999 Hanjour had accumulated enough hours--250--to fly with an FAA examiner for his commercial pilot's license. It was awarded and issued that same year. His address: a post-office box in Saudi Arabia, though for much of the past year he had lived with two other men, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar in a San Diego apartment complex...
...from a club. I saw a limo pick them up. It wasn't the first time. In this neighborhood you notice stuff like that. In the past couple of months, I have seen this happen at least two or three times." Last week Hanjour was the probable pilot when American Airlines Flight 77 flew into the Pentagon with Alhamzi and Al-Midhar aboard...
...vodka and orange juice, while Al-Shehhi preferred rum and cokes, five drinks apiece. "They were wasted," the bartender recalled, and Atta objected to the $48 bill. Tony Amos, the manager, asked if they were short the cash. "No," said Atta. "I have plenty of money. I'm a pilot." And he hauled a wad of $50 and $100 bills from his pocket, eventually leaving...
...After years of foot dragging, only recently has the FAA started to put stronger rules into effect, requiring more stringent employee background checks and training as well as mandating that all checked baggage be scanned by sophisticated bomb-screening devices--by 2014. Two weeks before the tragedy, a veteran pilot told TIME: "It's absurd to think we're safe...