Today is 9/11 … again

My memory of September 11, 2001, is, at best, a blur except for the images. The scenes, however, are indelibly etched in my mind.

It was a sunny morning with temperatures in the low 70s and not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day, I thought. I’d just walked back in the house from the short stroll delivering my daughter to one of her first days in first grade. Class began at 8 AM (9 AM Eastern). Nancy met me at the door, somewhat out of breath, her eyes wide. “An airplane crashed in New York,” she said. Clearly agitated, I could tell there was more to the story. “It hit the World Trade Center!”

She had my attention as we both rushed to the family room, where the TV was already showing the volcano-like eruption of smoke pouring from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. We’d only been watching the screen a few minutes when, just after 9 AM Eastern, a camera caught an image of a United Boeing 767 headed for the South Tower. Half an hour later, a American Airlines Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. All three airplanes had been hijacked by terrorists earlier that morning. The crashes claimed the lives of everyone aboard each aircraft. Later that morning we learned that another airplane, United 93, had been hijacked from Newark Airport, but crashed in Shanksville, PA after passengers regained control from the terrorists. Unfortunately, no one knew how to fly the aircraft. It’s believed the original terrorist plan was to crash Flight 93 into either the White House or the US Capitol building in Washington.

Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives that morning, including many hundreds of brave first responders who ran toward the chaos as everyone everyone else ran the other way.

Nancy and I spent that entire morning staring at the TV, barely saying a word. I wondered if this was how our parents felt when they learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I was numb as I wondered out loud … “Are we at war?”

Within that first hour, the FAA’s Command Center issued a nationwide ground stop to everything flying … airliners, flight trainers, business jets … everything. Everyone was ordered to land at the nearest suitable airport while the feds tried to figure out what was actually happening.

The rest is of course, history to those of us who lived through it. To young people today however, it’s probably just another date in history that makes their parents shake their heads if they remember it.

September 11, 2001 – 24 years ago today – irrevocably changed the aviation industry around the world, not to mention our lives as Americans.

Remembering 9/11 can only be even mildly experienced today by watching the video below demonstrating how the nationwide ground stop affected US airspace from the perspective of air traffic controllers. It took just four hours to completely clear the skies over our nation, skies that normally host 10,000+ flights at any given point.

We live not far from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and for most of that week following 9/11, the skies above Chicago were absolutely silent. Think about that. Not a plane flying anywhere.

Rob Mark