Reply #25: Clearly, your baseline assumption is that flight 175 hit the tower and that if any data deviates

[spooked911]

from that, then you find a way to discredit that argument.

My baseline is that I'm not sure what really happened with flight 175 (for a number of reasons, I doubt the official story, as I've discussed here over the years). With my baseline in mind, this story on the face, is evidence that flight 175 didn't crash into the WTC.

In terms of the MFR, the timestamps of the 9:23 message are not shown or discussed; it's not clear that they even realize that the 9:23 message has a received time. What do they even need to scrub here?

Note-- what do you think the second time is for, if not showing receipt? Why would an ACARS message show the time the message hit the ground station? Presumably this is instantaneous. The important part that would be on the message if when the plane received it. This is logical. If nothing else, there should at least be two receipt times-- one for the plane and one for the ground station. It seems logical that if there is one receipt time shown, that it is the received time for the plane.

how could the time at which the plane received the message be logged on the ground?
Presumably some kind of ping-back signal. This is not so hard to assume, given other types of modern communications.

As far as Ballinger, there is no reason to discount his knowledge of ACARS.

(As far as the 50 feet point, clearly that was just to note the difference in width between the tower and the 767 wingspan, assuming they wanted to get the maximal effect effect of the plane impact-- by getting the complete plane within the width of the tower. Yes, there is more leeway if you count banking the plane, but that isn't going to change the calculation dramatically, and the banking makes the piloting trickier.)

if one of the staffers had asked Ballinger point-blank whether that timestamp meant that UA175 must have received the 9:23 message -- and he had said that, no, it didn't mean that -- you would discount his response.

Not necessarily. I probably wouldn't pay much attention to this evidence unless someone else with ACARS familiarity said he was lying. It's intriguing evidence but it's not like inside job or even no planes rests on this.

But why do I think that if Ballinger said directly "that timestamp meant that UA175 must have received the 9:23 message", you would say he was full of shit and find ways to discredit him???? Or that we would just simply never hear about this?

Keep in mind, Ballinger retired right after 9/11. Perhaps he was just too stressed after what happened, or maybe he knew something was up and was forced into retirement. Who knows what he really knows or thinks?