Was anyone here flying on 9/11/01?
 

The recent events involving the death of OBL just got me remembering that day. I wasn't flying that day, but my parents were - they were on the tarmac at LHR about to take off for the US when the announcement came that US airspace was closed. They ended up staying in London an extra week.

Anyone else have experiences to share from that day?

I would love to hear about some of the experiences that day. I was not at all a FF flyer then (still in HS) and this is actually the first time it has crossed my mind, "What did OTHER flyers experience that day?"

Thanks for the responses!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...11-2001-a.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...l-stories.html

A friend of mine was at LAX getting ready to leave for a business trip. She was having a cup of coffee at Starbucks and thinking about her presentation the next day.

Suddenly, all flights were cancelled and police officers were telling everyone to leave the airport. She had no idea why.

Her husband called her cell phone and said "Leave LAX. Forget your luggage. Just leave and come straight home." It wasn't until she was in her car going home that she heard about the terrorist attacks on the radio.

Later, she learned that the CEO of her company was on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

I was flying westbound TATL in mid-air when 9/11 happened; was very lucky and landed at YYZ instead of the dozens of planes that diverted to Gander. Knew something was up on final approach as the airport was shut down and the tarmac full of planes parked every which way, but had no idea of what until an hour after landing. Took 4 days before was able to cross the border to re-enter the US (and it took many hours of waiting at security). Quite a time. Hope it never happens again.

Was flying the next day. Found out very early on 9.11, knew one of the pilots (BIL of oldest friend). Needless to say very difficult to concentrate. Still is.

No personal stories, but two second-hand ones, both trivial in the overall context but they add to the feeling of that sad day, I guess.

A friend was flying from Sydney (SYD to Los Angeles (LAX) and on the plane when the events in New York, Arlington and Pennsylvania happened. Naturally enough no announcement was made on the plane, and planes crossing the Pacific, if past a certain point, were allowed to continue on and land in the US even after all flights had been stopped. Consequently, she arrived to an (apparently) completely deserted airport, and no one would explain to the passengers what had happened. It wasn't until she rang her husband that she learned...

The second, very trivial, tale concerns three postcards, sent by someone I know from Boston to his young grandchildren in Australia, which they were very much looking forward to receiving. They never arrived. He has always assumed that they were probably on either AA 11 or UA 175 on their way to Australia via LAX. As I say, completely unimportant compared to everything else that happened as a result of the attacks that day, and it seems rather awful to related it, but it has always seemed a melancholy little turn of events and has served to remind me of the huge number of people who must have been indirectly affected on 11 September 2011.

Yes. The alternative of flying that day (on a flight departing NYC) would have been that of me waking up at and/or having breakfast at the Marriott closest to the impact (in NYC).

In effect got locked out of the country for nearly a week as a result, but rather well positioned for the circumstances as I ended up in South Asia.

I was in Amsterdam. As I was leaving the client site for my flight back to LGW, a headline came across on the news ticker about "plane crashes into WTC in New York", which we all assumed was a light aircraft gone astray.

Everything at the airport was normal until we got airside, when we found every single television switched to news channels, with people standing around, staring open-mouthed as the footage played out.

I've never been on a flight so quiet or tense inside. We were told we would be routed so we didn't fly over London, and may be delayed for US-bound flights returning.

On arrival at LGW, every single news source was switched off. A fairly typical contrast between the Dutch and English approaches :(

The news screen at Victoria station was switched on, though. Again, the normally noisy, busy concourse was eerily quiet, as people watched the towers collapse.

I spent the evening on the phone, just wanting to chat to friends and family. I didn't know anybody affected by it, but, for that moment, it felt like we could be on the brink of WW3. Nobody really knew what was going to happen next.

I flew the night before from New York to Minneapolis. Lived in NY at the time. This was the last time I passed through security with ease and with no drama.
Compared to today, it was a walk in the park. You just threw your bag on the belt, walked through the metal detector, and picked up your bag. No ticket, no ID, no nothing. Just the metal detector.

I had a meeting the next morning (Late morning), then was scheduled to fly to LAX.

I woke up on 9/11, and ordered room service for breakfast. For some reason I never turned on the TV. When breakfast arrived, the woman said "Do you know what's going on in the world?"

I said "What?"

She turned on the TV just in time for me to see the first tower falling.

I immediately called my business associates to get a handle on cancelling our meeting, but surprisingly, the business meeting was NOT cancelled, so that occupied my mind for the morning. I remember thinking how it was "business as usual" in my world even though thousands and thousands of my fellow citizens were horribly suffering or killed. It was very sad. I remember leaving the room as the 2nd tower was falling.

The hotel was packed with travelers and a group of Asians that were very worried about getting back home. From memory, I believe the airport was closed for three or four days while the Government figured out what to do next and how to do it. This caused chaos for stranded travelers, unless you could rent a car and drive home.

I stayed for two or three nights trying to figure out how I'd get home, then got a cab and went to the airport the first day it was open. CHAOS! Thousands and thousands there, hundreds in every line, nobody knew what to do and how they were going to get home. Rather than stand in line for hours trying to get a flight home, I decided to try and rent a car.

I remember Avis rental being so very kind. They said "Take any car you want, drive it anywhere you want, no drop charge, no mileage charge". They were a life-saver. This is why I only rent from Avis to this day.

I remember how "Quiet' the skies seemed on my drive home. I also remember how courteous drivers were on the road.

And, I remember seeing more than a few brand new cars full of passengers with temp tags (California) driving East on the interstate.
I heard later that some people stranded on the West Coast that could not find a rental car simply bought a car, and car-pooled back to NY.

I flew that weekend (9/11 occured on a Tuesday). By then displaced paxs had gotten home (in those days there were much more flights to handle irregular operations.) Took a USAir Express flight from LGA to BWI with one other pax. The USAir terminal at LGA was like a ghost town. Then a BWI to TPA Metrojet flight (the one time USAir attempt at a lcc) and there were three paxs onboard a 737.

All of the FAs on the Metrojet flight had just gotten their layoff notice that day, Metrojet was soon abandonded afterwards by USAir.

Oh, I don't know. They were strange times, and some people panicked.

I had flown back to the UK from BOS on an overnight flight on 10 Sep 01, landing in the early hours of 11 Sep. It was a terrible flight, everything went wrong, I got almost no sleep and had to go straight into the office for a meeting.

I spent the morning telling everyone what a bad flight it had been... that was until just after 2pm UK time when the news came in. Our head office is in Boston and we have people flying in and out of BOS every day. Fortunately we didn't lose anyone but we did have various people stranded around the world.

Since the phone lines to the US were down, the internet was grinding to a halt and I was uber-tired I just went hope to watch the TV coverage. I eventually fell asleep and woke up the next morning thinking I'd had a very bad dream.

I flew SNA/MSP for a meeting on 9/10 and was supposed to return to SNA on 9/11 in the late afternoon. I got up that morning in my hotel room and turned on the television to CNN just in time to catch the plane striking the second tower. At first I wasn't sure what I was watching -- I thought it was a preview for a movie. I wound up staying at the hotel through Saturday (luckily they were able to accommodate me) when I was finally able to fly home.

I flew a redeye SEA-MDW-DCA arriving Monday morning, 9/10 for a two-day consult in downtown Washington. I was booked to fly home the evening of 9/11. Tuesday morning, in our hotel four or five blocks from the White House, I was sitting in the breakfast room with my colleagues with the TV over the bar carrying the Today Show. I got up to find the coffeepot, looked up as the Today Show cut to the breaking-news shot of the damaged WTC, and did not sit down again.

I stayed at the bar for a good 12 to 14 hours. Strangers were hugging and weeping, especially in the short period when the White House was thought to be a target and bad information was circulating about bombs going off all over DC. The bar opened at 1000am in response to popular demand. A terrible, lucid, this-is-the-way-the-world-ends feeling settled over us that I will remember for the rest of my life. I remember pouring down one Cutty and ginger after another to absolutely no effect -- I have never touched that particular drink since.

Obviously homebound travel back to SEA was cancelled. It didn't help that the client had forced us to book the cheapest flights available, which meant we were on ATA, which had very few resources / alternatives for us. On the Wednesday night, we fell into conversation with a businessman from Kansas City who'd just rented a car and figured he could drive home in two or three days. My three colleagues and I looked at each other and said: hey, we could do that. I called Avis, where I had Preferred Select status (which they've since discontinued), and begged for a big car. They had one left in the entire DC area, but I would have to go up to BWI to fetch it. God bless them.

Me too. Thursday morning I took a nearly empty train up to BWI, which was going to reopen for flights that evening and looked as close to an armed camp as I ever hope to see in the US, and Avis gave me a big red Pontiac Bonneville with no mileage or drop-off charge. I took it back to DC, loaded up my friends, and we drove straight through to Seattle. It took 40 hours flat to get from Lafayette Park across from the White House to the Fauntleroy-Vashon ferry terminal on Puget Sound. 3000 miles, ten tanks of gas. Total bill from Avis: $285. I've been loyal ever since.

I don't doubt it. As we drove through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, etc. westbound it seemed like every tenth car on the road was a generic American sedan, obviously a rental like ours, filled with grim-looking businesspeople heading home.

One of the sales reps that served our company ended up buying a car to get home from the Northeast. In his case, he was planning on buying a new car anyways but it wasn't the way he wanted to have to do it.

My then 3 yr old son and I had flown into Philly on the 10th from Paris via FRA. Because we didn't know when the airports would reopen and when we could get our flt rescheduled, we took the QE2 back to South Hampton, England. I got a great price on it because there were many cancellations due to pax not able to get to the boat.

My retired mom was flying back NRT-LAX that day when the pilot came on saying that they are unable to land in the US. The flight landed in YVR and was told there was nothing they could do to accommodate her back to Los Angeles.

Luckily, being of Japanese descent, her first thought was “I wonder if I can take the train back home” and hopped onto a cab to the train depot in Vancouver. She recalled it was eerily quiet and wondered if the trains were cancelled too, but the Amtrak/VIA rail counter said they were wide open.

She booked the first Amtrak Cascades to Seattle and the connecting Coast Starlight to Los Angeles and was back in LA for me to pick her up at LA Union Station in less than 36 hours while most people were still stranded in YVR not knowing what do to. Though she mentioned that amongst the tragedy, she had the best train ride to remember.

The phone lines to the US were in the main not down that morning (US local time, or afternoon GMT/GMT+1 time) -- it was just that many people had trouble getting connected for one or more reason(s).

I had flown ORF-SEA on 9 Sept, and had a meeting at Boeing on 9/11. All my colleagues flew in to SEA on 10 Sept. We still had our meeting that morning, but it was apparent that everyone's mind was elsewhere. Was stuck in Seattle for 2 more nights, then rented a car from National (no drop charge or anything) for the long solo drive home- left Thursday at noon, arrived home in Virginia 6pm Sunday. 3300 miles in just over 3 days. Spent nights in Montana, South Dakota, and Kentucky. Colleagues all got home in various ways- some drove back a few days later, and others drove to Denver, and got flights home from there.

My parents were flying out to CDG from the US. They turned around on the way to the airport after hearing the news. And getting my urgent calls.

She did leave her checked luggage behind, but got it back a few days later. They delivered it to her house.

By then, the checked luggage was the least of her worries.

I just remembered another situation from 9/11/01. I mentioned before that the company CEO died in the Pentagon attack.

The CEO was flying from Washington to LA for a meeting. A colleague, also from Washington, was supposed to be at that very same meeting. The colleague was newly-hired, and decided and the last minute to fly out a day ahead (9/10/01) so he could have dinner and some face time with his direct-reports, one of whom was my friend who was supposed to fly to Ohio the next day (9/11/01).

Imagine how he must have felt. He missed a horrible death by one day, but his boss did not. He got zillions of phone calls from family and friends who had heard he was supposed to be in the air on Tuesday, flying from Washington to LAX. His little boy was crying on the phone "Daddy, don't get back on an airplane.".

The guy rented a car and drove home from Los Angeles to Washington in three days.

Our daughter's saga of a 3 day madhouse trip from Manchester, NH back to AUS on 9/11 ranks pretty high, puddle-jumping short hops on WN, etc., although no olover of WN, she admits that it s staff worked hard to get her home soonest.

I was on a plane a few days prior to 9/11, but in the preceding three days, I had been in Nova Scotia with my grandparents. I had just graduated college, and they wanted to take me to where my grandfather grew up.

We were scheduled to take the high-speed CAT ferry from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor around 11am (Atlantic Time). We were walking around Yarmouth, going in various shops while we waited, and one of the store owners said "Did you hear that the WTC building fell over?" She invited us back into her office to look up news on the internet, but it barely worked, there was so much internet traffic.

We went to the ferry terminal, and they said that the US Government hadn't decided whether or not to let ferry passengers from Canada in, but they thought they would be more likely to let us in if we were already there, so the boat would leave as scheduled. We watched the second tower fall in the terminal, and watched very fuzzy images of the Taliban saying they weren't involved on the satellite TV on the boat.

When we got to Bar Harbor, they let us in, but they searched everyone's car very thoroughly. I was told later (but never bothered to confirm it) that one or more of the hijackers had taken the same ferry to the US a few days or weeks before.

I was supposed to fly from Newark to San Francisco on 11 September 2001. My Delta flight had an equipment downgrade and I was offered a reroute on a United nonstop instead. I declined since I was chasing some Skymiles promo.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...11-2001-a.html

In retrospect, I guess that was a smart choice. Let it be a lesson to all FTers - flying the long way can not only earn you bonus miles but can save your life! :)

I was flying from LAN to MSP and ended up being diverted to MQT (the former K.I. Sawyer AFP) in the U.P. of Michigan.

I found out later that my flight was one of several dozen that were thought to have been potentially hijacked.

Was supposed to be flying BOS-BNA on DL to give a talk at a meeting the next day. We had boarded & were just about to push back when the ATC hold went into effect. FO came on & said we'd be waiting 'a few minutes', it was ok to go ahead & use our cellphones, & 'if anyone finds out what is going on, let us know'. Don't remember how long after it was before they deplaned us but told us to stay in the gate area because 'when we get the all clear, it's going to be a fast departure'.

Of course, that flight never did take off but I did get the miles for it since my BP had already been scanned! :p

My partner, who was going to the same meeting, was in the air TPA-BNA, but they were turned around & landed back at TPA. Another colleague was going RIC-ELP, landed somewhere in LIT, & drove the rest of his trip.

Most amazing story I heard was from another colleague who was heading to the same meeting I was, but decided to drive from Ann Arbor, Michigan to BNA. Left before the hijackings, apparently didn't have the radio on in the car, never turned the tv on when he got to the hotel that night, & literally didn't know anything had happened until the morning of the 12th when he came down for the meeting & asked the front desk clerk where everyone was!

An Army buddy of mine was killed in the Pentagon.

I was thinking of flying on 9/11 but booked a ticket for 9/10. If I flew as originally planned, I would have been stuck in Houston.

When the first tower was hit, the reports was that it was a business jet. I turned on the radio and there was mention that the second tower was hit. The DJ thought it was some bad ATC problem. I immediate suspected Osama.

I had been booked BWI-MCO on 9/12, for my yearly Orlando vacation, with a friend. Of course, when all traffic was grounded on the morning of 9/11, I realized that even if planes flew the next day, there would be thousands upon thousands of stranded travelers trying to get home, so I called the airline (I think it was a US Air /Metrojet flight) and they refunded my tickets with no penalty, no hassle, no questions asked.

My buddy and I wound up driving to Orlando over night. We left Baltimore at 6:10pm. Though I would usually have taken I-95 south, going around DC via the Capital Beltway, we had heard rumors that the Capital Beltway was closed, so we took the more time-consuming US 301 and joined up with I-95 just north of Richmond. We switched off driving every 3 hours, dozing whenever we were off-shift, listening to news reports on the radio the whole time, and pulled into the parking lot of our hotel in Orlando at 8:30am on 9/12.

I-95 is typically pretty deserted in the wee hours of the morning, especially that tie of year (September is when kids go back to school in the US, so there is very little leisure travel), and on a weeknight. But I've never seen the road so empty, before or since. There were times when we'd go 15-20 minutes without seeing another vehicle on either side of the highway. At every fuel stop we made, a deathly silence reigned that was somehow different and far more foreboding than the normal middle-of-the-night quiet. And when we arrived at our hotel, the mood was more subdued and somber than anything I've seen outside of a funeral.

I'm glad I got to travel a little that week. The experience of seeing reactions from people in other parts of the country, and meeting people from other parts of the country and other countries (Orlando always has a lot of foreign visitors) was, I think better than simply sequestering myself in my home and watching the news footage over and over for a week.

Was flying on United BRU-IAD-SFO that day. Over the Atlantic the Captain came on and said there was a problem with the inflight entertainment system and they'd have to reboot it. When it came back up there were no flight maps.

About 2 hours later the Captain came back on and said we had turned back to BRU due to a security issue in the US and we'd be updated upon our arrival in BRU. After the maps had been shut down we'd done a wide sweeping turn over the Atlantic and headed east again to the continent. Interestingly to me, the cabin crew never gave any indication of something being wrong during the 2+ hours before the Captain alerted us to our new destination.

Upon landing we were told what had happened but I really didn't comprehend exactly the extent until a Belgian friend picked me up, took me to his house and I saw it on TV.

Ended up buying a ticket on BA five days later when UA was unable to say when they'd be able to get me home.

The daughter of one of my employees was a FA for American who regularly flew the Boston to LAX route. She was Boston-based, and had flown in the night before with the crew that was actually on that ill-fated flight the next day....but she had the day off.

Her mother (my employee) panicked when word of the flight became known, because she feared her daughter was working the flight. She called and called her daughter's cellphone, no answer. Turned out she had the day off, was sleeping and had turned off the phone.

Maybe the scariest part of the story: her daughter said she was talking with one of the FAs who'd worked with her the night before, as they got off that flight, and the FA said she always looked forward to that Boston-to-LAX run, because she said, and this is a quote, "the flight is usually 2/3rds empty and everyone's asleep, so there aren't any troublemakers." Now, by troublemakers she meant your run-of-the-mill pain in the butt....but little did she know how very wrong she would be. When my employee related this story to me, it sent chills down my spine.

Sounds like my mother who misplaced my itinerary & thought I was on the UA flight, which I did take frequently (& would take exactly 6 weeks later). She called my office in a panic & though my sec'y was able to send text messages over my beeper, I couldn't get thru to anyone on the phone for hours.

Nor me -- I remember only one of our traveling party in DC had a Blackberry, the rest of us had dumb cheap Nokia cell phones, and we were able to text our home office in Seattle through the Blackberry, let them know we were OK, and ask them to ring our families. Voice calls were not possible for some hours.

I flew out of LAX at about 2 AM on 9/15 on one of (I believe) the first flights that got to actually go after 9/11. My original flight was scheduled for 9/12 so it was just a game of calling back until I could get rescheduled on a flight that would not get cancelled. I got booked on an 11 PM on the 14th and I was told to get there a few hours early. I was living in Marina Del Rey at the time so took a cab the short distance to the airport. The cab was cleared through the heavy security stationed outside the airport (IIRC no private vehicles were being let in at that time) and I was dropped off to a nearly empty curb. The ticket counter area was like a ghost town -- I expected to see a tumbleweed rolling through at any moment. Security was a breeze (no line AND no new security measures in place yet) and the walk to the gate was eerily quiet. No shops or restaurants open, as I recall, and just a smattering of people at a couple of gates hoping their flight would actually take off.

Mine ended up getting cancelled last minute but I was one of the lucky ones who got re-booked on a 2 AM to a different destination. I spent the majority of the next day (my birthday) at some airport in the midwest (can't even remember where at this point) before luckily grabbing a seat to my destination.

There were some people who seemed on high alert and nervous to be flying but most were just relieved to be able to travel. I remember feeling calm about the whole thing because I figured the worst was behind us.

I remember thinking that morning how beautiful it was and what a great day it would be to fly. At my house the wind was calm and not a cloud in sight. When the news came about what was happening in NY, I thought "irony is tragic". Now when we have a cloudless day like that September morning I think off all who were lost, and for the people whose lives were changed forever. A friend of mine was in BOS for a meeting and was supposed to fly back to LA that morning. He was booked on AA11 but he ended up canceling his flight to spend more time with a friend. If I remember correctly he took a train home to YVR.

Remembering that day in my head clearly.. all my employees and other employees were sent home as a result of the newsshock on CNN.

Didn't occur to me that it was terrorism, until later in the morning. Say the least surreal.