More on Those Darn Cell Phones

An economics professor of mine once said that the difference between a scientific theory and a conspiracy theory is the ability to make meaningful predictions. In economics, for example, the theory of supply and demand allows us to predict how people will respond to the price changes of the goods they buy, and we observe to see whether the theory is valid or not. Conspiracy theorists don't work that way. For example, the fact that the black boxes were not found in the World Trade Center wreckage proves that there is a conspiracy. Logically, we could predict then, that the fact that the black boxes were found in the Pentagon and Pennsylvania would then be an indication that there was not conspiracy. Wrong. That is just proof that they were faked.

Well, I work another way. I posted below on the phone calls from United 93, and how most of them were in fact air phone calls. In fact only 2 out of 37 calls were from cell phones. I then predicted that since it is difficult, although not impossible to make cell phone calls from 35,000 feet, those two calls must have made during the end of the flight, when the plane was approaching 5,000 feet.

So now I have looked up the two individuals, which was difficult since many news accounts incorrectly confuse cell phone and air phone calls, here is what I found:

CeeCee Lyles, at 9:47, at which time they were below 7,000 feet, just ten minutes later the passengers would try and take back the plane.

In Fort Myers, Fla., Lorne Lyles didn't hear the phone ringing. He'd worked the night shift and had lain down to sleep at 7:30. At 9:47 a.m., the answering machine picked up a call from his wife, CeeCee, stranded in the back of the airplane.

And Ed Felt, at 9:58, after the fight had already begun and the altitude was down below 5,200 ft.

An emergency dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pa., received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer.

"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Cramer quoted the man as saying. The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.