A Personal Account of 11 September 2001

It was a beautiful day.  The sun shone from a cloudless blue sky.  Visibility was extremely good.  But something was not quite right, creating a sense of unease.  Looking out of the aircraft windows on the left was clear blue sky, on the right the ground was visible, fields patchworking the landscape.  When an aircraft turns there is a deliberate movement, a bank and a turn and then the aircraft levels.  But this was not happening.  The aircraft maintained a gentle bank and the turn went on and on.  The ground below us, measured by the wing crossing over the fields, was turning very slowly.  We were completing a huge circle.  The smile returned by a passing flight attendant seemed a little strained.

It was 10 o’clock in the morning, United States Eastern Time.

The three of us had got up early that morning, to catch Flight 70 from Washington DC (Ronald Reagan National) Airport.  We arrived early, despite our cab driver having to circumnavigate the airport departures road twice.  He had never been to Reagan National before!  We enjoyed a cup of coffee before boarding the aircraft, a Boeing 757, which was less than half full.  We were travelling to Las Vegas.  Our elder son Giles had offered to take us on this four day trip to celebrate his promotion to a senior post at the UK MoD’s establishment at the British Embassy in Washington (BDSW).  His fiancée had chosen not to join us, as she had been to Las Vegas before.  She went to work as usual at the Embassy, where she works for the UK Foreign Office.

We pushed back on time, at 8:10 am and only had to wait a short time before it was our turn to take to the air.  We climbed to 21,000 feet and were on our way to Las Vegas, leaving Washington sparkling in the sunlight.  The Captain suggested that we should arrive in Vegas a little early and commented on the good weather and excellent visibility.

Giles had booked three seats together on the starboard side of the aircraft.  We were sitting over the wing, the leading edge and the pylon supporting the starboard engine easily visible.  By leaning forward and looking back the trailing edge of the wing was also visible.  As soon as the aircraft was closed up, Giles moved into the row behind to take advantage of three empty seats there.  He is not a good early riser and hoped to sleep some of the long journey away.  He missed breakfast, provided in a large plastic tub, a bread roll with sausage meat, egg and cheese.  It wasn’t much to miss!  Each tub contained a necklace of beads, Pru’s was yellow, mine was green.  It was a strange gift, especially for a man.  A male passenger was seen wearing his later, causing a smile from Pru.  She has kept hers as a good luck charm.

The sense of unease generated by our strange flight behaviour was not shared.  Why worry a nervous flyer, Pru, with something that may prove to be nothing?  After some minutes, the Captain made an announcement.  He suggested that some of us may have observed our strange manoeuvring and gave us an explanation.  He told us that there was an air traffic control problem.  There were some 27 or so air traffic control areas across the country.   There were discrepancies in the data being provided by the air traffic control system computers to the controllers.  As a result, a code zero had been declared, which meant that all aircraft had been instructed to land at their nearest airport, which in our case was St Louis, Missouri.  We were not to worry as the visibility was excellent; he could see clearly all around and we could go anywhere safely.

He was very calm and reassuring.  The unease disappeared, to be replaced by mild irritation at this interference with our plans.  Would we still be able to get going again in time to see the show “Cirque du Soleil that evening”?  The three hour time shift and our early start meant that we had plenty of time in hand.  Relax!

It took a long time to land.  We appeared to bleed off air speed.  The air brakes on the wing were raised for a period and the plane seemed to be coasting for some time, but without apparently losing height.  We didn’t speak, although I think I remember offering a reassuring squeeze to Pru.  The whole plane was quiet, as each of us was deep in our own thoughts.  I was waiting impatiently for the flaps to be extended, a precursor to landing.  At long last the flaps were extended in several agonisingly small steps and the landing gear thumped into place.  We then lost height rapidly, turning sharply as we flew low over St Louis, crossing over a large rail-track marshalling yard.  We landed safely, relieved.

We taxied off the main runway and parked beside another aircraft, a long way away from the terminal building.  The Captain pointed out that there were over 40 aircraft parked up, as the skies were being completely cleared.  He added that he was sorry to have had to break our journey by landing at St Louis but he was glad that we had landed safely.  This comment was a clue to how he was feeling.

Then the horror started.

He told us the astonishing news that the problems had been caused by terrorist activity.  I had accepted the story of a computer malfunction and my first reaction at this snippet of news was that terrorists must have bombed a computer centre or that a virus attack had taken place.  Pru was more on the ball.  She later said that she had thought that there had been a mid-air collision – not so far from the reality.

There was some confusion as to whether or not it was permissible to use mobile phones.  Permission was given, then immediately rescinded.  Then we were told that two aircraft had been crashed into the World Trade Centre.  Permission was then granted to use mobile phones and other passengers were quick to confirm this news.  One passenger relayed his conversation out loud to everyone, reporting that the Pentagon had also been struck.  At this point the Captain broadcast a request for mobile phone users not to share information with the rest of us as it may be unfounded.

Our airline, National, is a carrier owned by the hotels in Las Vegas and provides cheaper flights into Las Vegas from around the USA.  It operates from a relatively small number of airports and has no ground support at any of the airports from which it does not normally operate.  This applies to the airport at St Louis.  We were told that the airport authorities wanted us to deplane and we taxied to Gate 30.  We were asked to remove all our belongings but the Captain said that he hoped that we might be able to take off again in half an hour or so.  How wrong he was!

As we left the plane, the Captain was by the flight deck door and I called out “Well handled!” as we passed.  I meant it.  His coolness had been superb.

Inside the airport confusion reigned.  All the ground staff wanted us to do was move on, towards the exits, as they wanted to clear the concourse.  All the retail outlets were closed but one had a TV carrying CNN, which we could see through the wire shutters.  A group of us gathered round.  It was our first sight of the terrifying pictures.  We were moved on into the airport entrance hallway, where more TV monitors were visible.

Giles suggested that we needed to find somewhere to stay, as it was increasingly clear that we were not going to be able to return to the aircraft for some time.  It was now between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m..  Giles found an hotel advertisement and, using his mobile phone, got us booked into a hotel 15 miles away.  All the local hotels were already completely full.

As we stood in the airport hallway, the realisation struck that there were people at home who may be worried about us and needed to know that we were safe.  Giles had already tried to call Catherine at the embassy using his mobile but all he got was a busy signal.  We had no reason to believe that she had come to any harm but until we had spoken, it remained a worry.

My mobile phone failed to find a network and was therefore useless.  Giles’ mobile phone was not enabled to make international calls.  I suggested that we buy a calling card, only to find that Giles had one already.  We used it to call our younger son Mark, who was at home in Wapping, central London.  He was extremely relieved to hear from us.  He had been at home watching events unfold on BBC television.  He appeared to know more than we did.  It wasn’t until much later in the day, we discovered just how distraught he had been.

We then called my parents who were also watching television, at home in south London.  They too were very relieved to hear from us although it was difficult to get over to them where we were or what we were doing.  They did understand that we were safe.

We stood in a long but orderly line for a taxi.  Twenty minutes later we were installed in a room in our hotel, the first time we had shared a room for twenty seven years!

We sat glued to the television, watching CNN.  The same sequence of shots was shown over and over again.  It was of the second plane passing behind the first, already damaged tower and the fireball from the resulting impact with the second tower.  We were numb with shock.  It was like watching something from a movie, it couldn’t possibly be real.  But all the time the news was being updated with information about the four highjacks and it was all too apparent that it was real and awful beyond words.

Catherine called Giles to our considerable relief.  The embassy was being evacuated of all but essential staff but she fell into the latter category.  She thought that the plane that had crashed into the Pentagon had only hit a helipad, although that later proved to be incorrect.

The news soon confirmed four highjacks, one resulting in a crash south of Pittsburgh, one on the Pentagon, the other two at the World Trade Centre.  Stories starting coming in of mobile calls from passengers from the highjacked aircraft, particularly the one that crashed near Pittsburgh.  The bravery of those on board, who must have taken dramatic personal action, was awe-inspiring.  The initial pictures of the collapse of the towers were horrifying beyond belief.  However, they were but a hint of what was to come.

Eventually we had to turn the television off and take a break and eat.  We found that the shopping mall nearby had closed.  It appeared that anywhere where people were capable of being gathered together was considered to be a risk and America closed down and ground to a halt.  Fortunately, the restaurants remained open.

When we returned to the hotel, the television went back on again.  We lived every dreadful sickening second as the news continued to pour in.  The pictures of the second jet hitting the World Trade Centre now showed the crash from the side, the plane entering the building from the left, the windows across the face of the building in front of us marking the passage through the building, the nose of the plane seeming to pass right through the building before the fireball obscured the detail.  That sequence will live in my mind for ever.

More detail emerged of each highjack.  The fact that all this mayhem could be caused by people armed with no more than knives, seemed incredible.

Then the full horror of how close we had been to all this began to sink in.

Each highjack was of a plane loaded with fuel for a flight across the continent of America.  Each was of a two engined wide bodied Boeing aircraft, two 757’s and two 767’s.  The plane that crashed into the Pentagon, Flight 77 was a Boeing 767, which left Washington (Dulles International) at 8:10 am, bound for Los Angeles.  We left Washington (Reagan National) at 8:10 am, on Flight 70, a Boeing 767, loaded with fuel for a flight to Las Vegas.  These two planes flew in the same airspace, separated by not more than twenty miles.

The highjackers could so easily have chosen our plane.  Or, although less likely, we could have chosen to fly to Las Vegas via Los Angeles.  Fate decided otherwise but we were no longer mere observers of a dreadful and despicable act, we were and still are deeply personally involved.

Later that afternoon, (at 4:01 Eastern Time) my mobile phone beeped a couple of times to let me know that I had a text message.  Fortunately I had left it on despite the fact that it showed “No Network”.  For some reason my phone had now found a network and our service provider.  I read the message.  It was from Mark.

“Please call me as soon as possible or e-mail me – am worried love you”

Mark had obviously sent this message in the morning, before we managed to call him and it had only just arrived.  Moments later, the phone beeped again, telling me I had a voice mail message.  I called my voice mailbox, to hear Mark asking me to call as he was worried about us.  He must have tried to call us and got my voice mail, and after leaving a message tried the text messaging route.  The two messages arrived in reverse order after a delay of several hours.  The delay was probably caused by my phone’s inability to connect to a network.

The tone of Mark’s voice brought tears to my eyes.  Those few short words carried his sense of anguish with heart-rending clarity.  Although we had spoken to him earlier in the day and he should no longer have been concerned, I just had to call him immediately.  Mark had a copy of our itinerary and knew that we were in the air when the news broke in England.  He had been desperate to confirm that we were OK.  Hence the calls.  When we spoke in the morning, it had been an enormous relief to all of us.  There had not been any opportunity to examine emotions.  Now I was much more in tune and could sense just how badly Mark had been affected by the events and how scared he had been for us.  It was several days before he recovered.

The television news had made it clear that there would be no flights until 11:00 am the following day.  Later this was delayed until at least mid-day.  We had given up on the idea of going to Vegas.  Even if we could have got there, most of our planned time there would have passed before we arrived.  Getting back to Washington, Catherine and our home base became important.  However, we were stranded in by an airport which did not support our airline.  Flying back would be a challenge.  We might even have to fly to Vegas to get a trip back to Washington.  We decided to drive back.  We did not know how far it was but expected it to be about 1,000 miles.  We made the right choice.  Reagan National still had not been re-opened a week later.  That airport is within a few minutes flying time of the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon and may stay closed.

Getting hold of a hire car was a considerable challenge.  We needed it for a one way trip, as did everyone else who had the same idea.  The rental companies ran out of cars.  We had to wait until 5:00 p.m. on the next day, Wednesday, before we could leave.  We drove the 250 miles (on I70) to Indianapolis that evening and stayed in a very modest motel overnight.  We then drove another 600 miles (via I70, the last few miles on the I270 south), arriving in Bethesda at about 7:00 p.m. Thursday.  We were tired but pleased to be “home”.

During our unexpected road journey we passed through the States of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania before entering Maryland.  We passed by the cities of Indianapolis, Columbus and Pittsburgh and saw the signs for Chicago, and Cincinnati.  For all but the last 100 miles or so, where we swooped through the Allegheny Mountains, the road was straight, flat and uninteresting!  Giles and I shared the driving, two and half hours each from St Louis to Indianapolis on Wednesday and then two stints each of two hours Thursday.  Between us, we drove for a total of thirteen hours and covered 850 miles.  We only got lost once, getting out of St Louis!

The television went on again.  We had to know if the investigation had advanced and whether or not anyone had been found alive.  Many leads were reported, suggesting that progress was being made.  However, no survivors had been found.  The tales of anguish of those with missing relatives, fiercely hopeful, were heart rending, throat choking.  Tears flowed.

Then we saw the pictures of people falling from the World Trade Centre, just before the collapse.  A particular shot of an individual who must have chosen this way to die will remain with me for ever.  A still shot of the same individual was carried by the American newspapers the following day.  Head first, arms by his side, one knee bent, he did not flail, just flew, straight down.  Sleep had not come easily on Tuesday or Wednesday.  It did not come easily that night either.  No doubt millions shared a similar reaction.

How anyone can inflict such horror is beyond belief.  The fact that religion can be used as a lever to achieve such evil challenges the validity of any religious belief.  Man is evil.

We did learn to share our grief.  The television psychologists were helpful.  Their advice for families to talk about their feelings was well founded.  Some of it was aimed at parents with young children but it worked for us too.  Our family has been strengthened by the ordeal; a tiny comfort.