From Marty:
... A number of times I've seen interviews with Rataczak where he describes the negotiations with Cooper and it's Rat giving the actual settings "ask him what flap settings? Fifteen degrees? Thirty?" or something along those lines, and Cooper picked the reasonable-sounding number...
That's not what Rataczak told me. His words were: "When Cooper told me to set the flaps at fifteen, I knew he knew something about airplanes. The 727 is the only Boeing product that has a predent setting of fifteen degrees." Or words to that effect.
Yes, that is your 'fallback position'. What was the time of this exchange? Because it is well known Rataczak has always testified (eg 11/24/71) "Rataczak added that at no time did he have any direct contact with or observe the hijacker."
Anderson says: "and at about 8:05 pm I called the hijacker on the interphone and inquired if he could hear ok and whether there was anything they could do for him? The hijacker responded in the negative and the crew decided against any more tests or contacts until they arrived at Reno". 11/24/71
And at 6:21pm it was Mucklow who communicated with Anderson for Cooper saying " ...... trim the plane to 15 .....". She never said 'flaps to 15 degrees'.
Maybe Rataczak was confused about who was doing/saying what 40 years later when talking to you?
Moreover, it was Scott who communicated all of this to ATC saying "flaps to 15 degrees". Somebody is doing a lot of interpretation in these communications back and forth with Mucklow, for Cooper. We have "negotiable currency" vs. 'American negotiable currency' being communicated for a hijacker several stews have described as being Latin. Now we have '15 degree flaps' vs 'trim the plane to 15' vs. 'set the flaps at fifteen'.
And now you want to insist Rataczak personally talked to Cooper who said 'set the flaps at fifteen'.
Rataczak's testimony is: ""At no time did he have any direct contact with or observe the hijacker." It is Anderson who called to the back at 8:05 and personally talked to Cooper!