Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I consciously try not to single out this day on the blog, but after reading the stirring recollection of an airline passenger on that fateful 9-11 day, I believe it merits sharing.
Flyertalk member Putt4eagle vividly recalled his 09/11 experience in a post titled, “Listening to Channel 9 on September 11, 2001”. Channel 9 is (well, mostly was) the “From the Flight Deck” audio channel on United Airlines that allowed passengers to listen in on ATC communications.
An Excerpt
You can read his full story here, but I’ll quote this expert:
ATC got on the air and started by saying this was going to go quick and pilots needed to listen up. “Protocol responses are not required, just do exactly as I say quickly”. Then it began. “UA ###, turn right heading blah, blah expect Springfield airport. SWA ###, turn left heading blah, blah expect Rockford. Delta ###….” This went on for about 3 solid minutes before I rang the bell for the FA who was passing out breakfast. Our number had not yet been called. The FA came by and I said “We are all going back to O’Hare, they are landing every plane in the sky. What is going on?!?” She looked at me in disbelief and kind of leaned down to look out the window. I could see that she was about to start to tell me not to worry about it when we pitched right at about 45*s. It was so quick it nearly dumped the FA in my lap.
Her expression changed quickly. I could see she knew that was no turn you make in a 757 under normal conditions. She said, I will be right back and picked up the comm. She went flush. Not saying a word, not “ok”, not “goodbye”, not “I understand”… nothing, she hung up the phone. I don’t know why I remember that she did not respond so vividly in my mind but it took the whole thing up a notch for me. I knew she thought this was very serious and was scared. She walked right back to me, scooped up my tray and said in a voice full of authority, “Pull up your chair, put away your tray table and buckle up, now. We are landing in a few minutes. The pilot will be on with more instructions in a few minutes.” I was frozen.
Read more.
CONCLUSION
Many of you remember exactly where you were on that day that changed history. I was sitting in a high school chemistry class when I first heard about it. What I like about the story above is the ending (not included in the excerpt). Just like the tragedy of Hurricane Harvey brought out the best in people, so did the 09/11 attacks.
I remember it vividly:
I was on the west coast. I had slept in when my wife burst into our bedroom and said urgently: “Turn on the TV! Something bad is happening!!!”
I was groggy but alarmed by my wife’s voice. so I quickly grabbed the TV remote, turned on the TV and to my absolute horror witnessed the second tower in the middle of collapsing. A few seconds previously I was sleeping and then to awake to seeing the most horrible thing I had ever witnessed in my life happen before my eyes. I had never been so shocked in my life! What was going on???????? This is absolute insanity!!!! This can’t be true!!! What????????
It was a traumatic event and I have always stayed away from reading or watching anything related to 9/11. I did not want to relive that horrifying gut wrenching moment. For historical purposes, for my family I bought copies of all the news magazines that week that reported on the event. I buried them at the bottom of a box with old souvenirs and have no intention of ever reading them during my lifetime.
I landed at LGW the morning of 9/11 from ATL.
We, my ex and I, spent 4 days in the airport trying to get back to the US.
We finally made it back on either the 15th or 16th on BA and remember flying just west of Manhattan and looking out the window and seeing the smoke still rising from the giant hole. It was so surreal and sad.
Those next few week’s at ATL tower were a blur. At one point we had a NORDO twin landing at a field just south of ATL (FFC) that decided that, because he was NORDO, he should land on 27L at ATL without any permission. Looking south of the airport and seeing that aircraft coming straight towards the tower was terrifying.
My best friend and original trainer at ZBW’s wife was on AA11 while he was on his way into work. They stopped him at the gate and, though he had about 5 years left until retirement, never stepped foot in the facility again. The area we worked (Area E) encompassed the airspace where the hijackimgs took place (just north of NYC) and his friends and colleagues were the ones talking to the aircraft when it was hijacked.
Of course, in the FAA’s wisdom they refused to give him the required s/l to get to his retirement date. Fortunately we and the Union donated enough leave for him never go into the building again.
Thanks for sharing!
I was living in California on 9/11. As I was getting ready for work, Good Morning America broke in to the local news to report the events. That was unusual, as GMA did not come on until 7 am and this was well before 7. My story is not about traveling on 9/11 however. My father was in the hospital and was being moved to hospice care the next day in a nursing home. On the evening of September 12, my sister called me to tell me he had passed away.
In a panic, I told my sister that I wasn’t sure when the airports would reopen and that they may have to schedule the funeral without me. Fortunately, I was able to fly home to Pennsylvania on Sunday. Because of the security changes in the aftermath of 9/11, I had to be dropped off at a parking lot at LAX, wait in line, then board a bus to the terminal. I was dropped off well before 6 am for an 8:30am flight.
When we were dropped off at Terminal 1, the line for security stretched all the way to Terminal 2. I was sure I was going to miss my flight. Somehow, I managed to board the flight about 10 minutes before our scheduled takeoff time.
Everyone was eerily silent throughout the flight to Pittsburgh. Everyone looked at everyone else suspiciously. I don’t think anyone even used the lavatories. The Pittsburgh airport was quiet. No one was there. Most of the bars and restaurants were closed. I had time between my flights and found a bar and had a couple drinks. I do not even remember the flight to Harrisburg, getting the rental car, or much of what happened after that. I was exhausted, more mentally that physically. I had made it home for my father’s funeral, but I still had a return flight to LA about a week later and dreaded the thought of flying again.
Over the years, my opinions on funerals have changed. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. They are to comfort as much as even possible those that are alive. As such, I don’t mind missing funerals or someone missing mine. A genuine thought 10 years later is more than enough.
On 9/10/2001, I flew on a flight that I originally wanted to book for 9/11/2001 in the morning. If I had, I would have been stuck at a diversionary airport. On 9/11/2001, just after WTC1 was hit, I was making lots of copies as part of a huge legal battle against corrupt people in the South. So evil, they were in a position of trust, they fabricated lots of stuff. They did not win in the end. One of them could still be severely punished if turned in today. This doesn’t compare with those that perished on UA93 or AA11 but still it is memorable.
I was at the WTC and WFC on September 10th, I had slept at the Marriott there on the 9th night and was looking to stay until the 11th, but I was too cheap to personally eat the costs of changing flights to fly out of JFK on the 11th instead of on the 10th. On September 11th morning, I was already in the air on a UA flight. Upon my UA flight landing, passport control told me what had happened in the US and it felt surreal. After digesting what I could see on the TV screens, I made my way out to a Hyatt hotel to get a room and make calls to the people I knew who worked in or supported the people who worked in the WTC (on high floors at that), the WFC and around that part of lower Manhattan and then family and friends in Northern Virginia and DC. And then I dealt with Asia until flights back into the US were again allowed. UA wasn’t able to fly me back due to disruptions/positioning for a few days and the closed airspace, so it was Lufthansa that brought me back into the NYC area when airspace opened up and common carrier international flights from Europe recommenced. Will never forget that day and what followed. Even to this day, we as travelers are paying for it and a lot of expensive and self-defeating mistakes have been made by the country and the world and mourning the people gone is only part of the mourning about 9/11.
“….mourning the people gone is only part of the mourning about 9/11”
You’re so right, it’s almost painful. We lost so much that day. People in their 20s have never known a world without TSA, shoe removal, and liquid restrictions. Flight attendants focused “on your safety” and how to prevent a cockpit breach. Not being able to kiss your loved ones goodbye at the gate. The joy of travel versus the pain of travel. Our confidence in being safe in our own country gone forever.
My cousin was in her early 20s and returning from a vacation in Malaysia, flying first to LAX, then plane change and on to LHR.
She had spent basically all of her money while on vacation. Her credit card, which had a tiny limit, was at its max. She had no US currency as it was supposed to be just a plane change. When she got off the plane in LA on 9/11, she had no cash on hand, and no phone (lots of people didn’t have cell phones in 2001), and a maxed out credit card– she was totally stuck. Everyone was kicked out of the airport. She slept outside of LAX for a few days until the airport reopened, and eventually made her way home.
It’s easy to look at this story and think of it as terrible planning on her part, to a degree it was but it was also a different world back then. Young people didn’t have mobile phones, and credit cards for young people– if you could get one– often had incredibly small limits. Many young people got on flights home from a big trip with very little money on hand.
For me, I was assigned to work the month of September for a team that had a boss with a reputation of being a total jerk. Thankfully he was on a trip in Africa until 9/13 or 9/14. When the air travel got shut down, we all thought we’d get a few more days without him around, but he showed up just as scheduled. We asked him how he made it back and he wouldn’t explain– just said “my flight wasn’t impacted”. For years I wondered how he got home on time in that situation. The best I can figure is that he was already home from the trip on 9/11, but had told work that he would be gone longer to get a few additional days off. He more than lived up to his reputation of being a total jerk too.
The idea that 9/11 brought out the best in people is only true to some extent. It also brought out the worse in some people. We had to arrange to protect our potentially perceived Muslim”-looking American friends, colleagues and relatives or what was happening to them because they were being harassed and threatened around the DC area and elsewhere in the county and even in places like London where some visiting Americans of color were assaulted with things like thrown food from cars and such.
A lot of racism and other bigotry got a big boost from 9/11 and we are worse for it.
That is a very reasonable point.
My wife and I were in NYC for the weekend before 9/11. We took the ferry to Ellis Island and while sailing there, I insisted my wife come up to the top deck to see lower Manhattan. She gets seasick in the bathtub but I dragged her up there and she agreed, it was a beautiful view. The weather was CAVU, crystal clear. The towers stood tall. I kicked myself for not bringing my camera with me.
Heading back to St. Louis on Sunday night, our departure path from LGA took us west of Manhattan as we turned south. I had the window seat and could see the two towers; I leaned over to my wife and told her to look. I said to her, “say goodbye,” meaning, goodbye to NYC. She looked and whispered, “goodbye.”
Thirty six hours later, the twin towers were gone forever.
I worked as a Letter Carrier( Mailman) a co worker walked past me at 9am and said “ something is going down in New York, go to lunch room”. The tv was on and everything was indeed going down. My supervisor came into lunch room and asked me “ what do we do?” I was shop steward. We agreed to turn off tv and announce a problem with tv and we got an early dismissal to get out on the street. Everyone was happy. Once I was on my route I noticed two things right away. 1) how quiet the skies were. 2) my customers inviting me into their homes to watch what happened and to seek assurance that we were safe in Canada. We live one by air from NYC. It was a troubling day and months after.
I was watching the Today Show and gulping coffee. After the first plane hit there was speculation it was a small aircraft and was it an accident. While dressing the second plane struck the other tower. Matt Lauer said now I guess we know. I was out the door and at my bank in minutes. Withdrew a pile of cash, threw the dog, a backpack and a few other things in the big truck and started driving to SW Pennsylvania. Turned around when the UA 93 crashed. By that time they we flying Combat Air Patrols over the house (5 miles from the White House). Both cell and land lines were useless to connect. But as Cam mentioned it was the unnerving silence that I will never forget.
I was working at United Airlines Cargo JFK and was phoned and told not to come in that day. I lived at the highest point of Queens NY and could see the Towers in the distance — that billowing smoke, all the while, like everyone else, shocked, horrified and helpless watching what I knew were hundreds of FDNY men and thousands of building occupants were going to die that day. How many widows and other family members would be wailing in grief that night ?? …. and of course the loss of the United flights, employees and their occupants.
Next day summoned to work under orders where to park and bussed to the cargo facility. There was no work to be done, of course and within 24 hours quite a few staff were laid off with no one knowing if and when they would be called back. (None ever were). Only those of us with at least ten years of seniority held onto our jobs which took a while to get back to “normal”. Then a month later AA crashes in Belle Harbor Queens, it was enough to keep us reeling in shock yet again.
I’ve kept an article (but can’t find it buried somewhere) of an interview with the United CEO at that time, James E. Goodwin (I’m pretty sure it was a NYTimes Magazine article) and it was a very good read of things from UAL Chicago headquarters, real time dialogue and perspective etc. Hard to believe it’s 22 years gone by.
I was among probably less than 100 Americans on American soil who seriously don’t remember if I went to work on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, because nothing would happen until late in the evening, when the first tower was hit at 10:46 pm in the then-newly US Congress-designated Chamorro time zone. My alarm clock to wake up at 11 pm for the midnight shift on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 was my TV, and I woke up to it already on breaking news coverage, and 3 minutes later, live on TV, the second plane hit…
When flights resumed on Friday, September 14, every incoming tourist flight was empty and turned around full back to Japan. The food court at the mall that weekend was quiet and everyone was a local resident.
Fascinating perspective.
9/11 did in fact bring the best out of people. At least for a short time. I can’t imagine that ever happening again.
As for Harvey, what comes to mind for me is Joel Osteen barricading the doors to his church closed, which was not under water, while the rest of Houston was inundated.
I’m a Retired United Employee, on September 11 2001 I was ready to start my honeymoon, me and my wife who was also a United employee where in Perto Vayarta, Mexico ready to embrace into a tour when the news struck us, certainly marked us, not only as humans but also as we both were United employees starting a new adventure in life,
The time goes by so quickly. It still feels like yesterday. Living in DC it is still vivid to me that day. But enough time has passed that we don’t notice as much now how everything changed after. But it did. Not just security. Our consciousness as a nation was altered for multiple generations. With that today we still deal with the afterwards. Covid in many ways will also leave its mark in a similar fashion.
I was a young buck just making his mark when 9/11 happened. I became an older man quickly – though in my mid-30’s. But that is life. Man’s inhumanity to man will alter us at certain times. It has through history and it will do so again in the future. For those in their 20’s remember this. Naivety will eventually be taken from you whether you like it or not.
Mr Klint
I’m a UAL flight attendant, we met on a recent ICN -SFO Flight.
I was not flying that day, I was home making my bed when my sister called to make sure I was home. My mom was a Denver customer service agent working. It was one of the worst day of her career,, the other was UAL 232. Thank you once again for your 9/11 post, as I do every year, I text my girlfriend’ Happy Birthday and sat down and read your article. It brings a little peace to me every year. You never forget us, for that I’m forever grateful.
God Bless America,
Michelle
Sending my love from Los Angeles, Michelle!
I was in university and living in Vancouver BC, I remember the city was full of stranded travellers after the US closed their airspace, these poor people walked all over the city pulling their suitcases, looking lost and waiting to fly home.
I was an International flight Attendant for UA at the time and just commuted in from Washington Dulles on 9/10 on the last flight into Atlanta. I was exhausted, of course. I was woken up by my sister calling me to turn on the TV. I saw one of our planes go into the tower. All I could do was sit there in silence, tears running down my face. Then the second plane. Oh my God! This can’t be real. What ran through my mind is that could have been me, had I not gotten on that last flight. I didn’t know where the plane originated from, but that could have been me….did I know anyone on that plane? The families. That month I had just come back from maternity leave and learned I was pregnant again, finished out the month, and was back on leave. A lot of us had anxiety, PTSD, and nervousness. Some took leave or quit. Changed our outlook on life and put us on alert constantly. For the 1st time, I visited Ground Zero in March. In our training facilities we still have their pictures up. Can’t ever forget.
On the evening of September 9th, 2001, I was staying at the Marriott in the WFC. On the morning of September 10, 2001, I was at the WTC. Had to make a last minute shopping trip to pick up something from a store in the “underground” shopping plaza area of the building and did it on the 10th morning there because they had the store that sold that exact product where I had previously been buying it. I soon thereafter decided I wanted to stay in NYC for another night since the next day’s weather looked great and I wanted to meet up with some friends and former colleagues. In the process of that I was focused on looking at moving from the Marriott WFC to the Marriott WTC. [A few months earlier I had refused to take up a job in the WTC as I had other plans in mind that were to have me principally based again out of DC, but my flights were still mainly going to be out of NYC for a variety of reasons. On September 10th, I had a United flight booked to depart JFK but wanted to change it to leave on September 11th instead. But when I called up UA during the day on the 10th to try to make the change, the cost to change the cheap long-haul ticket or buy a new ticket for the 11th instead was so high that I stuck to leaving on the 10th from JFK to LHR. I had considered all sorts of various United and American Airlines options out of JFK, EWR and BOS to try to save money to fly out on the 11th instead of the 10th. On the 11th of September, I landed in London. On the 12th of September, I was in Delhi. India was the base to some Afghans hostile to both the Taliban and critical of the Taliban’s backer Pakistan. I remained in South Asia until I was able to fly back to NYC on around September 18th IIRC. When the LH flight was arriving in the NYC area, I was in a middle section of the wide-body plane so couldn’t see out the window, but I recall hearing the song “Coming to America” playing while back in US airspace. It hit me pretty hard that the country I was returning to was not the country I had just left and that there was a real risk of the country losing its way in the process of responding to the pain everybody was feeling. The LH flight attendant passed by me and asked me if everything was ok, and I don’t really recall what I said but I think she touched my shoulder and then went on to do whatever she had to do. After landing back, I had to take a connecting flight to the DC area and had a window seat. I could see that the WTC site was still smoldering. All my subsequent trips from the NYC area to South Asia the rest of that year and much of the next had me go to CPH on SAS to catch the CPH-DEL flights since United had cancelled the LHR-DEL service that was part of the JFK-LHR-DEL-HKG route. It is almost certainly just because of 9/11 that I am so often at CPH still. And this was the first year where I decided not to be back in the US on 9/11.
I was at work, and my sister called me saying a plane crashed into the WTC in New York. We didn’t have much info on it at that point, so I assumed it was a small plane, like a Cessna. Then about 20 minutes later, she called me back and said another plane went into the other tower of the WTC. I thought, Huh?? The third phone call from her was to tell me a plane crashed into the Pentagon. By then, we all knew something terrible was happening.
The Air Traffic Controllers were the unsung heroes of that day. Getting every plane on the ground without incident in unprecedented circumstances was truly a feat.