From our sister publication: we at Flight Journal consider it to be an honor to present stories of those who were directly involved in the events of 9/11 as pilots or flight crew. This is yet another view of the event that has shaped our present and our future.
“Our plane has been hijacked. Flight attendant #1 stabbed. Flight attendant #5 stabbed. A business class passenger’s throat has been slashed and he is bleeding severely and may be dead. The captain is not flying the aircraft. Something’s terribly wrong. I see the water. I see the buildings.” After a short pause, she says, “We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low! Oh my God!” The phone went dead.
“A colleague relayed this information to us on a conference call at approximately 10:30 a.m. central time at American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth. One of the flight attendants aboard hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 was able to connect with a manager at her base in Boston and relayed crucial information shortly before the aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center.
“Earlier, I was driving into work on a gorgeous Tuesday morning. The DJ of my favorite radio station said it was the 11th day of September and just in from the newsroom was a report that a small general aviation aircraft had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I thought to myself, ‘How horrible’ and figured that someone flying solo had probably had a heart attack at the yoke or something.
Read the story published in honor of the 10th Anniversary of this horrific event, click here
At the time, I was the Operations Manager at the Roanoke Regional Airport, Roanoke, VA. I had just entered the terminal for work and saw a group of people clustered around a small black and white TV in a rental car booth. The response to my querry to what they were watching was that an airplane had hit one of the towers of the
world Trade Center in NY. I watched a coupple of moments, then recalling the historical fact of a B-25 hitting the Empire State Building in the 40’s, I went up to my office.
I mentioned the situation to my supervisor who suggested we turn on our training TV to see further news. I noticed also out the window that several commercial aircraft were lined up on a taxiway not moving. Just then, we saw (on the TV) the second aircraft hit the other tower. My phone rang from the control tower telling me that all aircraft had just been ordered back to parking and that all airborne aircraft were being ordered to land at the nearest airport and that we could expect more than 100 aircraft. Being new to commerical airports at the time, I asked my supervisor how are we supposed to handle “this” to which he replied, “I don’t know, we’ve never done this before.”
Well, we got all “the home” aircraft parked and passengers out of the terminal within 30 minutes and only recovered 4 of the expected 100 aircraft. As I was escorting the last group of passengers (from a Continental Flight)through the terminal they asked what had happened just about the time we came to a small cluster of people standing near a TV near one of our vendor spots. Before I could reply, the reporter recapped the events of the day. One woman turned absolutely white and said, “My God, I was supposed to be on that flight (the second to hit the towers), but I got held up in traffic and got booked on another flight.”
When I got home that day, my wife commented to me, “The world as we knew it has just ended. Things will never be the same.”
How right she was/is.
I appreciate the reprint, however it would have been nice to reprint the entire article. As it stands, the article ends mid sentence.