story20518.xml

story20518.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

I'm a flight attendant for a regional airline (ie smaller 30 passenger and 50 passenger planes) and that morning I woke up in Newark and began my day around 5 or 5:15 at Newark Airport. It was the 3rd day of a trip I picked up as a favor to a friend. I had only been a flight attendant just over five months at that point. My day was supposed to be I go from Newark to Baltimore/Washington then back to Newark, then directly home to Richmond, VA from Newark by about 11am. Obviously, it didn't happen that way. I was scheduled to land in Newark about 5 minutes after 9 am that morning. We were in New York's airspace when the first plane hit and they starting turning flights away from all New York city area airports. Around 8:50 where I should have been getting bells to let me know we were landing, I got a call from the cockpit instead. They told me that the World Trade Center was on fire and it being a Port Authority building for New York City, we were going to have to divert somewhere else because they just closed Newark Airport. I was on a 30 passenger propeller plane that morning and only had 12 people on board. I explained to them what had just been explained to me and told them I would let them know when we found out exactly where we were going. As proof that what I was saying was true, I had them look out the window on the left side where you could clearly see the trail of smoke escaping the top of the North Tower. I sat in a window seat just in front of my jumpseat so I could see exactly what was going on too. I told the person that was just across the aisle from where I sat to pay attention, this had to be breaking news we were seeing live. How little did I know what a small statement that was.
We circled that area mostly over New Jersey but it being such a clear morning we could see Manhattan easily. We could still see it clearly 15 minutes later when the South Tower was hit and a huge explosion came, from my sightline, from the back of the building that was already on fire. I didn't see the plane hit, but I saw the explosion it caused. We turned south at that last turn to land eventually in Atlantic City where we had to stay until 3 days later when we repositioned our plane back up to Newark.
As I saw we weren't landing in Philadelphia as I was told we were and I told the passengers we were, I called the cockpit to find out where we were going. They were very busy staying in contact with ATC but took a minute to let me know that the WTC had been bombed, both buildings and we were going to Atlantic City instead. Until we landed there, we didn't hear what actually happened. That planes were being used to attack our country. I don't know how I would have reacted had I known that, regardless of the small size of the plane I was on. Especially since at first, they thought it was a small plane. All I could think at that point was "Was it one of ours?" "Is everyone I know and work with safe?" "Why is this happening?" Operations let us call anyone we needed to let them know we were safe. I called my mom at work, my dad at home, my grandmother, and by the time I called my grandmother, the Pentagon had been attacked. She didn't even have the news on yet, so that was her first indication that anything was going on that morning. Up to this point, all of my news had come through other people and radio. They didn't have a TV in operations so they took us over to a hangar that had a living room type setting and a big screen TV for us to watch all of this play out. It was worse seeing it up close than I could have imagined. That's when the South Tower fell. Shortly after that, an American Airlines crew on a widebody plane had a been diverted there as well. Some of the other flight attendant were telling me Atlantic City didn't want to put their plane near the terminal because they were enroute to Boston from Miami and were Boston based. By now flight numbers were being announced on TV and we knew exactly which flights were involved. Who's coworkers and friends were now dead due to the terrorists. Of course, by now, we knew it was terrorism. I watched with a broken heart as the American crew all started realizing they had a roommate that was on one of the planes, or a friend, or had work the same flight recently. Even more personal than seeing the WTC damaged from the planes was seeing the reactions of those who knew people on the planes. All of the shock and horror.
A few days later, we took our plane back to Newark. There were thankfully 20 other people in Newark that I worked with and knew and since New York had been shut down again, we decided to go into Hoboken for a few drinks and destress some. We knew none of us would be working early the next morning. The street we parked on was almost right on the water and straight across from lower Manhattan. There was still that gaping pit of smoke wafting over us even as we stood in New Jersey. I can't forget that awful stench of death in the smoke. As so many say "Never forget," well, I can't and I won't. I tell this story often and make sure others know the terror I felt, as many others did that day.