Let's remember...

NC Pilot said:
I'll be flying, but going commercial unfortunately. :vomit:
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Ditto. I flew commercial today Minneapolis - Milwaukee. I intentionally planned my return trip on this day, as a very small way to stick my finger in the Islamists' eye.

Then, in the Humphrey Terminal, I was behind a woman from the TSA helping a 90++ woman in a wheelchair take off her shoes, jacket, etc., and then ask her if she could walk alone through the metal detector without her cane, as "they" need to X-ray the cane. She could not, and needed to be escorted through the detector. Then she had to get her shoes back on, jacket, etc. I wanted to ask the TSA person rhetorically if this was really necessary, but the airport workers obviously aren't the policy makers who worship at the altar of political correctness.

I shook my head and asked myself whether we have learned ANYTHING from 11 September 2001. With very few exceptions, all I heard today is a maudlin look back to the distant past. No one seems POd any more. I don't get it.
 
I've been avoiding reliving that day all day today, but there are some amazing stories here, so I'll share my personal synopsis:

I live in the area, I was supposed to work downtown that morning but my schedule was changed the day before.
There were two nagging worries: 1)that I could not reach anybody,
and 2) "I live less than 20 miles from a large reactor (Indian Point, which one of the planes cruised over as it followed the Hudson to the target) and they're saying there are still planes unaccounted for..."

The worst feeling of all was knowing that I could not get into the city to help anybody...I knew many people who had a thousand good reasons on any given day to be right there where it happened. Some, as it turned out, were there and survived. Some did not. I often travel through that PATH station since it reopened, and I don't linger there.

Some more positive memories:

Less than a week after, I attended a flying club meeting. It was very quiet, and there were still no airliner contrails to be seen. I felt brave and defiant, but I must have looked sad, because the club's then-president, who'd been alive when Pearl Harbor was hit and flew for the US military for many years, sort of moved alongside me and laid a hand on my shoulder without a word.
We all went home feeling a little stronger.

About a year before, on a whim I decided to go to the observation deck of Tower 2, though I never had done so. It was a perfect day; well over 40 miles vis from the top. A few light planes buzzed by, some below me.
Near me along the rail was a man and his young son; he was telling the boy about the raptors that nested on the radio mast atop Tower 1. Suddenly he said "and there goes one now!" and pointed, and I turned just in time to see a fine peregrine, already tucked and accelerating, as it plunged down towards the street a thousand feet below.

If only everyone there on that terrible day had wings...
 
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I was 19 years old. I had been binge drinking all night long before, and went to pass out at my parents' house, since it was a shorter drive than driving across the city to my apartment.

I had passed out for maybe an hour when my dad comes in and says "Nick, a plane hit the world trade center."

I awoke, thinking it was a dumb GA pilot that crashed into the building, but when I turned on the TV, I saw a lot more smoke and flames than would have come from a Cessna.

3 minutes later, the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower live on CNN.

Wow. I remember that day like it was yesterday still. I remember going out and hanging our flag over the garage and crying my eyes out, thinking about how many people died after the first tower collapsed.

I didn't even know the 2nd was about to collapse as well. Boy, the emotions when I started to see that first building fall. The reporters didn't know what was happening, just "A lot more smoke is coming out now!" and I looked at my parents and said "That building is falling, look!"

There are only 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years I can say I cried. 9/11 was one of them, and next to my niece getting cancer, its probably the hardest I'd ever cried in my life.

Dammit, it still sucks, and it still upsets me.

I was working at AOL at the time, and since Time Warner has a building in Manhatten, they shut down all call centers. Insane.
 
I was at work doing a tour at a power plant of some newly installed equipment. A group had traveled down from Pittsburgh in a chartered jet and someone in the control room said a plane had hit the WTC. A little while later the second one hit and everyone just stood there in stunned silence.

We then heard aircraft were being told to land and not take off and the problem became how to get these folks back to Pittsburgh. Ended up renting a limo to take them back. Once that was handled I just went home and sat in front of the TV watching the news.

Saturday I flew a friend to Roanoke Rapids to pick up his plane and again that night to Myrtle Beach for Dinner. I was determined not to let these bastards keep us on the ground. The ride back to my home airport was surreal. It was night and I could see the lights of fighters circling Pope and Seymour Johnson Air Force Bases and Fort Bragg. I was talking to Fayetteville Approach and the only other plane on the frequency was a commercial 737.
 
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