In a crowded, modern cityscape not unlike lower Manhattan, I'm flying a jetliner down an avenue where everything is wrong.
Students with some experience can usually be trained to fly a commercial jetliner within a year, said David Esser, chairman of the aeronautical science department.
One way to accomplish both goals might be to fly a large jetliner into the fortified building that holds the reactor.
As an engineer specializing in executive jets, Khairul would not necessarily have all the knowledge needed to divert and fly a large jetliner.
It is very hard today, for instance, if not impossible, to fly an American jetliner into a mountain, because satellites can tell a crew where the plane is even when visibility is zero.
But the accounts of law enforcement officials indicate that in the days before the Sept. 11 attack, analysts at both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. were advised of the suspicious activities of an immigrant linked to Muslim extremism who wanted to fly a large commercial jetliner, but whose interest seemed limited only to steering the plane in flight.
Law enforcement officials acknowledged this week that they did not know how and when Al Qaeda was created, or whether it was connected to a tangled array of terrorism plots and plotters, including Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani who told the police in the Philippines in 1995 of a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II, blow up 12 American jetliners over Asia and fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters.
Kept in the Army chest he uses as a nightstand, this bit of paper evokes so much -- from the weapon of a jetliner flying directly over him to the innocence of his infant twins -- yet he rarely looks at it.
Another witness, Terry Butler, was working at a salvage yard about a half mile from the eventual crash site when he said he saw a jetliner flying just above the treetops.
Among this group are people who enrolled in flight training schools in the last year but who have not explained their interest in learning to fly commercial jetliners.
