It seems to me that there is a little too much lawyering going on around here. By that, I mean that people are focusing on intent at the expense of evidence. Whether or not AE/FN were trying to fly from somewhere near Howland to Gardner or not, it sure seems like someone did, and at about the same time.
If I leave my office and walk due west to my car, find it and drive home, it doesn't mean that I know I was due east of my car to start with. It just means I knew enough about the location of my car to find it from where I was. My track from the office doesn't tell anyone how I knew where the car was, why I walked to it, what I was thinking about on the walk or what happened to me after I found the car. Perhaps I stored it as a waypoint in my phone, activated it as a target, calculated range and bearing, put myself on a direct course to the car and never looked up. Maybe I just parked it in the same spot as always or under the only tree around. Regardless, the evidence that I found the car and drove off is all that an observer would have available to study or try and refute.
If I go missing, someone searches my house, finds my briefcase with papers signed by my boss that day at the office, fresh tire tracks matching the new Goodyears I just bought and my only neighbor remembering hearing a car go up my driveway, but no sign of me or the car, it still doesn't matter how I knew how to find my car. You can argue that I was too stupid to find my car or my house, that I had better things to do than to leave work or that you wouldn't have done it that way, but the evidence that I found it and drove home remains.
The navigation challenge debated here is a great one and I've learned much from the choir, but the fact remains that all you need in order to fly from somewhere around Howland to Gardner is a working aircraft, some fuel and some luck. Not knowing how to do something doesn't mean you can't do it. I do it all the time, usually involving something with buttons or a keyboard. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.