It turns out that the Northwest Airlines flight that may have had terrorists on board also had another passenger with 9/11 connections. Tim Nelson, who originally tipped off the FBI about a suspicious flight student in my town named Zacarias Moussaoui, had a business-class seat and told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the flight:

A Northwest Airlines plane flying from the Netherlands to India was escorted back to the Amsterdam airport by Dutch F-16 fighter jets Wednesday, and police arrested 12 passengers whose behavior had aroused the crew's suspicion.

Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight 42, which originated at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport on Tuesday, was Tim Nelson, the tipster who first alerted the FBI to Al-Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Twin Cities flight school five years ago. ...

Nelson said he was with a flight crew for a Northwest subsidiary, Classic Aviation, en route to Bombay, India, to ferry a plane with a mechanical problem back to Amsterdam for repairs.

About 15 minutes into the flight, he said, members of the cabin crew hurried past him and stood in the front of the cabin, pointing to the rear.

Nelson said the lead flight attendant then made an announcement over the plane's broadcast system advising everyone to stay seated.

Nelson didn't get to see too much of the action, as it turned out. He couldn't get a view of the cabin behind him when the activity began. He did praise the actions of the flight crew and the air marshals, and also offered his services if they needed an extra hand. Fortunately, that was not necessary and the flight landed safely after dumping its fuel.

The sense of deja vu had to be overwhelming for Nelson. Five years ago this month (in fact, last week), Nelson and and Hugh Sims separately notified the FBI after determining that their new flight student acted in a strange and irrational manner. (The flight school is located in the same town in which I live, and I pass it every time I take the First Mate to her dialysis treatments.) Nelson, the son of a cop, knew Moussaoui didn't add up when he started flashing cash for his lessons and claimed that he only wanted the lessons as an ego boost. Unfortunately, due to internal impediments between the Department of Justice and intelligence agencies, the arrest never led investigators to discover the 9/11 plot until it had already played out.

Nelson, I'm sure, could have lived without this trip through memory lane.

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