The Impossible Cell Phone Calls From United 93

Exploring the Evidence

In this article I want to explore two of the “alleged” cell phone calls that were made from United 93 on 9/11.

Lorne Lyles, husband of Cee Cee Lyles who was a Flight Attendant aboard United 93, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11th, he received a call from his wife. She told him her plane had been hijacked and that she and some others were getting ready to "go to the cockpit."

Lorne described that, after the call got disconnected: "I looked at the caller ID, and noticed that it was a call, and it was from her cell phone. And I'm like, OK, wait a minute. How can she call me from on the plane from a cell phone, because cell phones don't work on a plane? That's what I'm thinking."

Source: http://www.grizzlyadams.tv/portraitOfCourage/index.html

Lorne Lyles Explains His Wife's Phone Call From UA93

Video segment source: Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. DVD. Directed by David Priest, 2006.

Deena Burnett, whose husband Tom Burnett apparently called her four times from on board Flight 93. In her own book, published in 2006, Deena Burnett described receiving the first of these calls from her husband at 9:27 a.m. on September 11th:

"I looked at the caller ID and indeed it was Tom's cell phone number." Deena, who during the early 1990s had worked as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines, asked Tom: "Where are you? Are you in the air?" She commented in her book, "I didn't understand how he could be calling me on his cell phone from the air."

Later in the day of 9/11, Deena told the FBI that "only one" of the calls she'd received from her husband "did not show on the caller identification."

The reason for this was simply that "she was on the line with another call" when it was made. Otherwise, she had been "able to determine that her husband was using his own cellular telephone" on all his calls, "because the caller identification showed his number."

Source: http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2001-09-11-FBI-FD302-deena-lynne-burnett.pdf

Scientific Experiments Conducted

A. K. Dewdney who is a scientist, conducted a series of experiments using cell phones from a small propeller aircraft, over the city of London, Ontario in Canada. (He noted that, "not only is the cell phone technological base in Canada identical to its U.S. counterpart, but Canadian communication technology is second to none, Canada being a world leader in research and development."

Source: http://physics911.net/projectachilles

Dewdney found:

Cell phone calls from commercial aircraft much over 8,000 feet are essentially impossible, while those below 8,000 feet are highly unlikely down to about 2,000, where they become merely unlikely. Moreover, even at the latter altitude (and below), the handoff problem appears. Any airliner at or below this altitude, flying at the normal speed of approximately 500 mph, would encounter the handoff problem. An aircraft traveling at this speed would not be over the cell site long enough to complete the electronic "handshake" (which takes several seconds to complete) before arriving over the next cell site, when the call has to be handed off from the first cell site to the next one. This also takes a few seconds, the result being, in the optimal case, a series of broken transmissions that must end, sooner or later, in failure.

Source: http://physics911.net/cellphoneflight93

An article published by the Travel Technologist shortly after 9/11 stated:

"Wireless communications networks weren't designed for ground-to-air communication. Cellular experts privately admit that they're surprised the calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they lasted as long as they did."

Source: http://www.elliott.org/technology/2001/cellpermit.htm

Wireless Review similarly commented:

"Because wireless networks are designed for terrestrial use, the fact that so many people were able to call from the sky [on September 11] brings into question how the phones worked from such altitudes. Alexa Graf, AT&T spokesperson, said systems are not designed for calls from high altitudes, suggesting it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations."

Source: http://telephonyonline.com/wireless/mag/wireless_final_contact/

Even in a recent mainstream science channel Veritasium (with 16+ million subscribers) talks about the impossibly of making cell phone calls while in high altitude flight.

[Thanks to Mat at Math Easy Solutions for this video]

Conclusion:

The accounts from both these two family members who received the cell phone calls, indicates that the cell phone calls must have been made from the ground, being as it is impossible to make cell phone calls from the aircraft at the altitudes involved that United 93 was flying at the times the cell phone calls were being made. As much as this may offend people to say this, or insensitive towards the victims families, it is the evidence which decides this conclusion, not the messenger bringing the evidence forth. If the authorities can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the cell phone calls could have been made from the aircrafts on 9/11, then I would happily accept such evidence, but in 23 years since 9/11, nothing has been proven by the authorities to convince me differently.

Thanks for reading & caring!