story7841.xml

story7841.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-18

I was a flight attendant for Vanguard Airlines, I say "was" because the company has now gone bankrupt due to lowered passenger loads immediately following the terrorist attacks and to the increase in costs to operate due to increased security measures (which I feel are ABSOLUTELY necessary). Anyway, we had left DFW early that morning (0710) and were heading to MCI - the first of a four-leg day for my crew. The "back end crew" aka flight attendants - didn't have a clue anything was even going on but when we landed at 0825, I opened the cockpit door and our captain and our first officer were listening VERY INTENTLY to their headsets and had a puzzled look on their face. I remember Jay, our captain, said, "pull the cockpit door closed". I stepped into the cockpit and closed the door. "What's up?" Jay said, "There's been a nationwide ground stop and they can't say why?" I didn't have a clue what that meant. "What's going on?" Our first officer said, "They're making it sound like war has broke out!" I went and told the other two girls and we made an announcement that our thru passengers needed to deplane but we didn't give any further info. First of all because we didn't really have any and secondly because the very limited info we did have didn't sound good and we didn't want to unduly alarm anyone. The CSA that was working our flight went down to OPS to see when we might be taking off again and by this time total pandemonium had broken out all over. The airport was like a bomb shelter with wall to wall people and everyone with tears in their eyes. Cell phones were down and none of us could call family to tell them we were ok. My best friend, who's also a flight attendant, had gotten diverted the night before to LGA when she should have been in PIT and ended up spending 6 days in New York. My world had fallen apart!