Twenty three years ago today I was sitting in my office in Arlington, Virginia. I was fortunate not to be on the road, although several colleagues were and it was a challenge to help them get home when planes were grounded on 9/11. A whole generation of adults was born after that day that remains ingrained in my experience.
The first news I heard about planes crashing into the World Trade Center came over email. It wasn’t on the newswires yet. I was on an airline industry list, and the subject line was “Terrorists are bombing us with airplanes.” I didn’t think it was real. News was quickly coming in, much of it wrong, speculating on the aircraft types (a private plane!) and that there could have been an accident (especially after only one plane had hit).
Two 9/11 hijackers almost missed their flight. One American Airlines agent still deals with the guilt of helping them make it onto American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles that crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 59 passengers and crew and 125 in the building as well.
Ticket agent Vaughn Allex saw two full fare first class passengers and wanted to offer his best customer service.
“I realize that there’s probably nothing I could’ve done to prevent what happened. I’ve come to terms with that.”
Vaughn Allex, former American Airlines gate agent, speaks about the guilt he feels for allowing hijackers onto Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001. https://t.co/qabkKxf6WD pic.twitter.com/HYj7VXTVRK
— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) September 10, 2021
He marked the two men for extra security because they couldn’t answer the standard security check-in questions, but they didn’t have bombs or guns so got through just fine.
Here’s an amazing thread with an inside look at how 9/11 unfolded. Dick Cheney gave the order to shoot down United flight 93. Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney scrambled her jet without any missiles on board, in a suicide mission to take out the civilian jetliner. She made the decision that she would ram the tail of the aircraft. It was the first time the U.S. military had been given permission to shoot down a civilian plane, and with U.S. citizens on board. It would not be the last.
On 9/11 it didn’t happen because passengers took matters into their own hands. One passenger dialed 911 from the lavatory using a cell phone while other passengers used Airfones to call loved ones.
- Passenger Todd Beamer: “Ok. Let’s roll.”
- The cockpit voice recorder has a man in Arabic saying “Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen.”
- And as United flight 93 is crashed into an abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania, nine times in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest.”
People cleared out of my office fairly quickly after the news broke, but my boss kept me around wanting to work through budgets. Traffic that afternoon was terrible, worse than I’ve ever seen in DC. The atmosphere in the city was completely surreal, and the days that followed were just sad.
D.C. didn’t ‘come together’ in the same way I remember New York being different at the time. And I didn’t lose anyone very close to me, though many friends of friends were in the Towers that day. I grew up visiting the towers. One friend lost all four of her roommates.
I would bring snacks and chocolates and other little gifts to the agents I knew at United’s city ticket offices. There were neighborhood offices then and those are the people I knew best. Here are the names of the flight crew who lost their lives on 9/11.
Flying in the aftermath of 9/11 is hard to describe. I remember flight attendants who were genuinely scared. And when the flight attendants are scared passengers are too.
Washington National airport didn’t re-open right away. The approach path is so close to ‘important people’ and important people are always more protected. When anthrax was delivered in the mail on Capitol Hill, Hill staffers all got Cipro but Postal Service employees didn’t.
I had a ticket to fly in and out of National airport before flights had resumed, so United moved me over to Dulles but capacity was limited. I had to fly back from South Florida Miami – Orlando – Washington Dulles since I couldn’t get anything non-stop home.
Many airfares after 9/11 actually rose briefly even though people were avoiding the air. Normally you think empty planes means lower prices. But dropping price wouldn’t have convinced marginal flyers into the skies. The people flying were the ones who really had to and they were less price sensitive.
Airport security was federalized. The TSA was initially part of the Department of Transportation. There was no Germanic-sounding Department of ‘Homeland Security’ yet. We got secondary gate screenings but could still bring liquids through checkpoints for about 5 more years. We didn’t have to take off our shoes yet.
Passengers became our best line of defense. Before 9/11 if a plane was hijacked passengers would remain docile. We’d wait it out until terrorist demands were met, and in all likelihood most people would be ok. The equilibrium shifted and passengers now assume terrorists will bring down planes, so they aren’t going to sit idly by. That may be the most important change in aviation security over the past 20 years. Reinforced cockpit doors are a net positive as well. Everything else is far less clear, or clearly negative. It saddens me to see this displayed by TSA as though they somehow own the legacy of 9/11, even if they’re a sad result of it.
Each day for the next 8 years was a reminder for me of 9/11 because my daily commute back then took me right past the Pentagon. Flying for me wasn’t scary. Neither were most of the places I’ve visited. I attribute that to driving twice a day past an actual 9/11 target. What else that I would do would be more dangerous?
We all remember 9/11 in different ways. In 2013 the San Diego Marriott Mission Valley offered 30 minutes of free mini-muffins for guests.
What pic.twitter.com/L35ytAtCWP
— guillotease (@eclectrica) September 11, 2013
9/11 will always be personal for many people, and I’ll forever resent those who used it for their own political or business purposes. Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia for instance, a month after 9/11, declared of the government pork opportunities “It’s an open grab bag, so let’s grab.”
Sadly the legacy of 9/11 isn’t the part about coming together, it’s the forever wars (including in places not at all connected to the attacks) and the forever war at home that’s given us a ramped up security state. George W. Bush said they hate us for our freedoms, but if that’s true then surrendering our freedoms capitulated to them.