What is ‘Home Run’? America faced a new crisis in the mid-seventies where US commercial jets were being hijacked for geopolitical purposes. Determined to gain the upper hand in this new form of aerial warfare, two American multinationals collaborated with the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) on a project designed to facilitate the remote recovery of hijacked American aircraft. It was a brilliant concept, “Home Run” [not its real code name], which allowed specialist ground controllers to listen to cockpit conversations on the target aircrafts, eventually taking absolute control of the  computerized flight control system by remote means. Until recently Swedish ‘Telia’ used Boeing’s ‘Home Run’ to allow passengers to surf free of charge on-board airplanes.

Transponder and ‘Home Run’: Technically a transponder is a combined radio transmitter and receiver which operates automatically, in reference to 9/11 relaying data between the four aircrafts and air traffic controls on the ground. The communication protocols provide a unique “identity” for each aircraft, which are essential to avoid mid-air collisions in crowded airspace, and equally essential for ‘Home Run’ controllers lock onto the intended aircrafts for remote control manoeuvrings. Once the correct aircraft has been located, Home Run “piggy backs” a data transmission onto the transponder channel and takes direct control from the ground. Per 9-11 commission time line, all 9/11 planes had transponders turned off during hijacking! This explains why none of the 9/11 aircraft sent a special “I have been hijacked” transponder code, despite multiple activation points on all four aircrafts. Because once the transponder frequency had already been piggy backed by Home Run, transmission of the special hijack code was rendered impossible. This was the first hard proof that the 9/11 target aircrafts had been hijacked electronically from the ground.

Helpless Pilots: Once control has been taken away from the ground using top secret computer codes (known only to top secret military and Boeing specialists), regardless of the wishes of the hijackers or flight deck crew, the hijacked aircraft could be recovered remotely forcing it to land at an airport of choice or programmed destination, with no more difficulty than flying radio-controlled model planes or military drones like Global Hawk. With reference to 9/11, the orchestrators selected World Trade Centre (WTC) and Pentagon as well as, probably Capitol/White House (aborted Flight 93) as the targeted destinations. All flights were delayed for convenience of remote hijacking! Unfortunately, Flight 93 encountered additional delay due to unpredictable traffic situation disrupting the rather precision plan. Donald Rumsfeld admitted it was shot down by the same people who hijacked the other planes.   

How a pilot operates an aircraft?  In order to control an aircraft in three-dimensional space, the pilot uses the control yoke (joystick) in front of him, rudder pedals under his feet, and a bank of engine throttles located at his side. Without engine thrust the aircraft would not fly at all, so for more speed or altitude the pilot increases throttle, and for less speed or altitude the pilot decreases throttle.

In order to raise or lower the nose of the aircraft, the pilot pulls or pushes on the control yoke, which in turn raises or lowers the elevators on the horizontal tail plane. To bank the aircraft left or right, the pilot moves the control yoke to the left or right, which in turn operates the ailerons on the outer wings. Lastly, to turn left or right at low speed or “balance” turns at high speed, the pilot presses the left or right rudder pedals as required, which in turn move the rudder on the vertical stabilizer.