story68.xml

story68.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-02-20

On Tuesday September 11th, my roommate and I were returning from a vacation in Turkey. Six hours into the flight, somewhere over the Atlantic, the pilot announced that US airspace had closed and we had been told to fly to Ireland and circle until directed back to the US or to another destination. Although the flight attendants remarked that this was "very unusual," none of the passengers or crew appeared disturbed. The crew speculated that the FAA was having problems with its computer or radar system and that we would resume our course shortly.

After circling Ireland for nearly two hours, the pilot again addressed the passengers: our plane was being diverted to Frankfurt Germany. Some passengers were increasingly annoyed at the delay of our arrival into JFK and the inability to make airphone calls, but nothing else appeared to be amiss.

On the ground in Frankfurt, the passengers and crew left the plane. We went into a large waiting area while the crew went into the terminal (I believe that they were being told of the tragedy). Once all the passengers were in the waiting area, a Delta representative announced that we would be spending the night in the Frankfurt area. Delta was arranging accommodations and ground transportation. She then told us that "due to events in the United States" we would most likely not be departing on Wednesday. Immediately, passengers turned to eachother and the Delta representative asking "What events?"

Several passengers whipped out cel phones, dialing frantically to the United States and Turkey. Reports they received, full of misinformation, spread quickly among the passengers: planes crashing in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and New York; hijacked planes loose over Texas; passenger planes shot down by the Air Force. The Delta representative confirmed that two planes had hit the World Trade Center in New York and another had crashed into the Pentagon. While this news was translated for the Turkish passengers, the shock and horror of this tragedy hit all of us. We had no details of the crashes, so between overactive imaginations and the circulating rumors, panic set in.

I live a mile from the Pentagon in Arlington. I, and many of my friends, commute through the Pentagon on the Metro and Metrobus. Unanswerable questions consumed me: Did the plane crash on the Metro side of the Pentagon? Did it crash during rush hour? Were my friends there when it happened? What if the other rumored hijackings and crashes had happened? This was unimaginable.

After an interminable wait, we went through baggage claim and customs and boarded the busses. On the bus, we located a BBC radio station covering the unfolding disaster in the US. Starving for accurate information, we listened in silence. Upon arriving at the hotel, over two hours from the airport (due to a large international convention and the grounding of over 30 planes, there were no available rooms in Frankfurt), we scrambled to our rooms and remained glued to CNN for hours. I am not sure if what I imagined was worse than what we saw on the news. Fortunately, we were able to call home to family and friends to assure them that we were fine, and that they were safe.

The employees of the hotel and the Delta representatives that accompanied us could not have been more understanding and helpful. Our flight was kept together, other than those passengers who on Wednesday elected to return to Istanbul. Stranded in a foreign country while watching disaster unfold at home is heartbreaking. Our inability to do anything was as frustrating as being so far away. Among the passengers on our flight, there was an Air Force mechanic, a Department of Defense employee, and a trained Red Cross Disaster volunteer, all anxious to get home to help.

Finally, on Saturday, we were able to get a flight back to the US, not to JFK as scheduled, but to Cincinnati. Fortunately, my roommate's parents live in Cincinnati, they met us at the airport. On Sunday, they drove us to West Virginia where a friend from DC picked us up and took us home.