MY 9/11 Story

My Unheralded Mission: “Keeping the Engine of American Commerce from Seizing”

Part 1: Chaos, Fear and Confusion

Certain stories remain untold for decades. This is among them. Delays arise from multiple reasons such as indifference, laziness, security issues, procrastination, and various other excuses, some legitimate and some not. My reason is simply procrastination. In the end, a story insists on being told, and when this aligns with the writer’s desire to convey it, it comes forth. This is my 911 story.

I need to offer one warning: this is a memoir crafted in the style of oral history. The events I recount happened twenty-five years ago, and while they were traumatic and left a strong mark on my subconscious, I did not view them as a historian would, but as an engaged and unintentional participant. The days immediately after the 911 attack were filled with confusion and chaos, and much of my story must be drawn from a twenty-five-year-old memory. Even so, the heart of my story is accurate. To fill in any gaps over the years, I researched the events online for dates, locations, and times. Nonetheless, I trust you’ll find this an intriguing narrative of a pilot’s peculiar 911 incident.

September 11, 2001, dawned with clear skies and beautiful weather. New York’s sky was a deep blue expanse stretching to the horizon. I don’t remember there being even one cloud in it. I arrived in Newark the evening before, accompanied by my wife: Newark was our crew-base. I was a captain at Continental Airlines, and she was a flight attendant; we had both commuted from Boston on September 10th for our respective recurrent ground schools. Continental conducted its recurring ground school sessions just north of Newark, in Secaucus, N.J. The evening seemed typical, though we had no clue about what was ahead.

The following morning, we set off for Secaucus. I’m not sure how we got there, but I know for certain we didn’t drive there ourselves. When I arrived at the training center, I went to my pilot recurrent class while my wife went to her flight attendant class on the other side of the building. Her classroom looked out over the Hudson River towards Manhattan. The pilot classroom was completely without a view. As the instructor droned on about a familiar airplane system, I noticed my wife desperately signaling at me through the door of the classroom. The interruption left me feeling slightly confused and a little embarrassed. Catching my distraction, the instructor cast a glance at my wife. He smiled kindly and gestured for her to enter, knowing us all. I didn’t get up, hoping this interruption would matter. It did. She informed us that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center. I naturally assumed, as did we all, that it was probably a general aviation plane piloted by a stray flyer. How could an airplane hit a towering skyscraper on a day with perfect visibility and ceiling conditions (CAVU). It appeared utterly ridiculous. We all got up and walked to her classroom.

I remember casually mentioning that an airplane hitting the World Trade Center on such a clear day was probably deliberate. I was chastised by another pilot for fear mongering. We walked in through the classroom door just as a huge ball of orange and red engulfed part of the second tower. It’s unclear whether we captured the exact instant of the second jet’s crash or its immediate consequences, but we did not see the airplane. I locked eyes with the pilot who had reprimanded me; What everyone was certain of was that America was under attack. There was uncertainty about what would occur next.

We returned to our classroom, sat and stared at the instructor. I suspected that continuing ground school might be doubtful, and I knew the instructor shared our confusion. We began discussing the who and what of the situation when the instructor said the classes were cancelled.

Meeting up with my wife, I organized our return to the Newark Marriott. Nobody realized how quickly America was about to change. Overcome by fear and anger, we were about to enter unfamiliar and dangerous ground. It would soon become clear just how hostile the situation was going to be. Smoke poured out of the two towers, and I remember thinking they resembled burning candles. It was, to say the least, nothing short of a nightmare. We didn’t understand how dramatically everything was going to change. I don’t think we were notified about the other attacks yet. They would have only heightened the fear and confusion. The initial plane struck the WTC at 8:46 EDT. The second strike occurred at 9:03 EDT. The attack on the Pentagon happened at 9:37 EDT, with the Shanksville, PA crash happening at 10:03 EDT.

I recall us meeting with other employees and organizing transport to the airport. We headed to I-95 South. The entrance was blocked by the police. I-95 had been shut down. I knew things were bad, but the shutdown of the main north-south highway made it clear we were no longer in Kansas. We found ourselves inside the cyclone.

My wife and I had a flight the following morning, and for some illogical reason, I believed we still might fly. Our existence was still rooted in the old world. We decided to go west, passing south through the towns west of I-95 via the secondary roads. Given the length of the trip, I suppose we might have heard about other attacks by then. The driver agreed to drop us off at the Airport Marriott. As we navigated the airport road system, we came across a roadblock manned by several armed men. The authorities ordered us not to approach Newark Airport or the Airport Marriott and directed us to make a U-turn. The situation became increasingly bizarre. I informed the officers that my wife and I were Continental crew-members and that we were staying at the hotel.I let him know we were flying the following morning and that our uniforms and luggage were in our room. They likely felt the same confusion as everyone else and allowed us to go through.

At the Marriott, I saw a chaotic situation involving stranded guests, police officers, and what seemed to be federal agents. It struck me as unusual to see so many law enforcement officers at one hotel, but I didn’t think much of it and we headed to our room. Entering the room, we turned on CNN, and a clearer picture emerged. It may have been at this point that we realized the full scale of the attacks, because the details were stressed more clearly. Although it sounds ridiculous now, I wondered if our morning trip was still happening. Nonetheless, realty was starting to emerge. I can’t recall the exact specifics, but when we contacted scheduling during the day, we found out our morning trip was cancelled, though scheduling wouldn’t release us from duty. Having paid for the hotel room for the night, we chose to remain there. It would have made no difference; we were notified that no guest could leave the hotel as the The Twin Towers smoldered across the Hudson River. Terrified people had hurled themselves into oblivion. Firefighters had climbed towards their own reckoning. Isolated in our hotel room, we stayed glued to the TV screen. At this point, I was sure all the world was glued to TVs and radios, or whatever form of communication they use. I channel-surfed frenetically, hoping a station would offer something new. None did. We were conscious of the ongoing tragedy, but strangely removed from the visceral images we were watching. It reminded me of calmly eating dinner while watching a newscast of hellish combat footage occurring in some far-off land. A comfortable spectator to hell: It was surreal. We headed to the lobby.

People crowded the lobby: Cops, federal agents, soldiers with automatic weapons and, of course, frightened and confused guests. We maneuvered through the crowd toward the restaurant. A long line had formed, and we joined it. I was still confused. Why was this hotel sequestered? Was law enforcement isolating all local hotels? How long would be before we could leave? I was hesitant to approach the edgy, gun-toting officers with such intrusive questions. I remember impatiently getting out of the line and sitting down somewhere adjacent to the restaurant. I decided I would approach a hotel worker and see if I could find out what was transpiring. Eventually, I found one of them—a more talkative one—I think he might have been a manager of some sort. He whispered to me, “Some of the terrorists stayed here last night.”

The rest of the day passed in a blur; food deliveries were stopped, and the restaurant ran out of food and beverages. What I do remember was that people were making urgent phone calls, armed men patrolled, lots of men in suits walking around glancing furtively; it took on the feel of a maximum security prison. That evening my wife and I headed to the pool and sat, making phone calls to friends and family who had been frantically trying to check on us. I was also making calls to scheduling to determine our reserve status. 

The next day I had gathered some facts. Essentially, the hotel had become an operational base for federal investigators; The intensive cordon occurred because two of the Flight 93 hijackers had spent the night at a local hotel. My research shows that four Flight 93 hijackers assembled in the area by September 7th. Some or all of them stayed at the Marriott. The hotel sits directly in the center of the airport’s roadway system; it was sealed off as part of the total grounding and multi-day closure of Newark International Airport. As my story unfolds, you will see that at least one Continental flight departed Newark while it was “closed”.

The timeline was as follows: 

September 11th, the FBI and Port Authority secured and isolated the Marriott. The FBI confined guests inside while setting up a command post and starting their investigation of the terrorists’ movements. 

September 12th, the hotel remained heavily guarded and locked down. FBI investigators swept through the building. 

September 13th, the feds lifted the ‘containment protocol’; the high-priority forensic gathering and all interviews were complete. Guests were allowed to arrange travel out of the area on very limited commercial transit.

When we learned we were free to leave, we called my mother-in-law in Stamford, Ct., and arranged for a pickup. As we exited the hotel, the metallic, throat-burning smell of pulverized skyscrapers and what I can only describe as death immediately struck me. You could taste it. We were only a few miles across the Hudson from the World Trade Center. I imagined what it must have been like in Manhattan. My mother-in-law eventually made her way to Newark and picked us up. 

To say the ride to Connecticut was somber would be a colossal understatement. Somberness permeated the air over all of America, just as pungent as the acrid odor of pulverized skyscrapers permeated the air around NYC. My mother-in-law expressed her relief, and our conversation centered on the attack and its likely aftermath. I vividly remember crossing the Tappen Zee Bridge, about 39 miles north of Lower Manhattan; the distance did little to shed the acrid scent. I was stunned. I glanced around and spotted several police boats patrolling the bridge, their blue lights flashing. Again the fatuous thought struck me: we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Arriving in Stamford, we headed into the house. Both my wife and I were technically still on reserve duty, meaning scheduling owned us. I was sure they would release us from duty, and I know it sounds like a movie cliché, but I needed a drink and some rest after the emotional rollercoaster of the last two days. My wife had already contacted flight-attendant scheduling, and they granted her release from duty. I made my call to pilot-scheduling, and was informed they would not release me. My first thought was, why? To my knowledge, only military flights were flying anywhere over America, but I chose diplomacy with the scheduler. This was not the time to push it. Surely he shared our confusion, and I trusted he would resolve the situation promptly. He didn’t. I remained on duty.

We sat in the living room, where my mother-in-law had a bar that I knew I would not be using. I felt puzzled and relied on the only information I had. I reviewed; terrorists in several locations had attacked us; aircraft throughout America were grounded, and those en route had been diverted to airports in northern Maine, Canada, and Mexico. I racked my brain for an answer to why they had not released me from duty, but I never found one. We watched more news coverage of the attacks and went to bed.

Part 2: Night Flight to Pittsburgh

“ A Trusted Crew”

The following day, scheduling called me to assign an evening flight to Pittsburgh. If the refusal to be released from duty the night before confused me, the flight assignment left me astonished. Flying a scheduled passenger flight seemed out of the question; maybe it was a logistics flight carrying freight, but I doubted that, or moving law enforcement officers, or military personnel. That also made no sense, since the military had numerous transport planes and the Feds possessed their own aircraft. Mine wasn’t to reason why at this point.

Having left our car in Stamford, I departed from my mother-in-law’s home in the early evening and arrived at Newark Airport right as it was growing dark. I parked in the employee parking lot and caught a ride to the airport. 

When I arrived at Terminal C, I remembered several details: it was dark, eerily silent, and surrounded by armed men, including some National Guardsmen carrying automatic weapons. Upon entering the terminal, amazement hit me right away. The usually busy terminal resembled a cathedral. It looked darker than normal and was deserted except for the armed men. I could hear my footsteps echoing as I walked. As I neared the wing that leads to my concourse, I noticed another pilot approaching me in uniform. He was a captain I had known for many years. Two Continental captains, no travelers, and men carrying weapons. The situation intrigued and confused me even more. 

The first thing I asked was, “What are you doing here?” He responded without hesitation, “I’m going to Pittsburgh.”

“I’m going to Pittsburgh, too.” I then remarked, “What the hell is going on here?” He merely shrugged and responded that he “had no idea.” We were both captains; we were flying a flight to Pittsburgh. Besides flying the line as a captain, he also served as a check-airman, a training pilot who conducts check-rides for other pilots. I remember asking which seat he would take, and he replied, the right seat (co-pilot’s seat). I would fly as captain. I thought it was odd, he was above me in seniority, but didn’t dwell on it much. I thought to myself, where were all the grounded Newark-based first-officers?

Once I had our flight paperwork, I stayed in operations. I asked the dispatcher to check if any employees were stranded and needed a ride to Pittsburgh. Several individuals took up the offer. Upon reaching the gate, I met the cabin crew. They felt as puzzled as I did. There were a number of men who appeared to be law-enforcement officers, yet I was still unaware of the flight’s purpose and they could have simply been civilians. I found out much later that they were likely Federal Reserve couriers or plainclothes federal law enforcement agents/armed escorts. Though it may seem naive now, I wondered if this could actually be a passenger flight. At this early stage of the tragedy, very little information was available to us, and it left us quite bewildered.

I sat in the cockpit alongside the other captain, I occupied the left seat while he took the right. We followed our usual pre-flight routine, aware that thousands of our fellow citizens lay dead just across the Hudson River. Once the checks were done, my co-pilot asked for clearance to taxi. Since we were the only aircraft active at Newark International Airport, it appeared quite odd. While taxiing out, we completed our checklists, fighting our minds wandering elsewhere. Preparing for take-off on Runway 4L, I caught sight of Manhattan’s lights as I aligned the plane toward the northeast. I needed to focus on flying rather than the nearby disaster to my east. I spooled up the engine and initiated the takeoff roll.

As we climbed out of Newark, a few things stand out clearly in my memory. I remember the departure controller’s enthusiastic voice greeting our flight and expressing his happiness to see us airborne. It likely appeared to him as a touch of normalcy. We initially headed northeast, and I asked him if we could bank further east so we could observe what later became known as Ground Zero. He complied with our request, and I banked toward Manhattan. There it was, the scorched debris of the World Trade Center. After thanking him and resuming our course, New York Center took control and, as I recall, granted us direct clearance to Pittsburgh. The silence that replaced the constant staccato bursts of instructions on the New York Center frequency was as eerie and as disquieting as the silence of Terminal C back in Newark. 

After landing in Pittsburgh, we taxied to the gate. Only a few memories come to mind from this stage of the journey. I went over to operations to collect the flight documents for the flight back to Newark. The civilians disembarked together with the few employees we had on board, who expressed their gratitude for bringing them home. The plane was being unloaded when I arrived with the flight documents. Back in the cockpit with my co-pilot, ground control told me that another terrorist threat had caused the cancellation of our return flight. While I realized we might remain stranded in Pittsburgh for days. I phoned my wife and told her I wasn’t coming back to Stamford, at least not this evening.

Here is what I learned about this situation. “The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and airline dispatchers were operating on a hair-trigger. If a security alert happened anywhere in the country, or if a regional air traffic control center became overwhelmed or “spooked” by an unidentified radar blip, planes were ordered to turn around or land immediately.” 

I was in the gate area with the entire crew discussing our dilemma when dispatch informed us to board the jet and depart immediately. Once again, confusion and excitement filled us as we prepared to get out of Dodge. I discovered later that they regarded our aircraft as a “high-value asset”. Continental dispatch and the federal authorities probably realized that keeping a functional aircraft and a “trusted crew” sitting on the tarmac in Pittsburgh—a heavily congested security zone because of its proximity to the Flight 93 recovery operation—was a liability.” 

The flight back to Newark went uneventfully, or at least as uneventfully as any flight could go given the situation. I got into my car and headed back to Stamford. I was still clueless about what the flight had achieved and couldn’t respond to the myriad questions from my wife and mother-in-law when they welcomed me back. I was equally incapable of answering questions from anyone else who approached me throughout the years. I never completely forgot the experience, but the memory gradually faded into obscurity, as such things often do.

Several years later I was flipping through a magazine; it was a one of those historical ones. An article piqued my interest. Remarkably, it outlined the flight and the reasons behind it. At last, I found an answer. I was eager to share it with everyone, particularly my colleague on the flight. The enigma was finally unraveled.

So, what had my crew and I achieved that evening? Here is the most detailed explanation I could locate for that night’s flight according to data archived online:

On the afternoon of September 11, as panic spread, millions of Americans rushed to ATMs to withdraw money. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York realized that the city and surrounding regions could face a massive liquidity shortage if cash was not rapidly redistributed to regional distribution centers. The Fed instantly flooded the banking system with liquidity, increasing its loans to banks from a daily average of $59 million to $45.5 billion to prevent a financial collapse.

Pittsburgh was a highly strategic destination for your flight for two main reasons: The Fed Network— The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has a major operational Pittsburgh Branch. When New York’s logistical capabilities were bottlenecked, regional branches like Pittsburgh were used to absorb, process, and redistribute cash and checks across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

Proximity to Flight 93: Pittsburgh is roughly 75 miles northwest of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed. In the days following 9/11, Pittsburgh International Airport became a heavily fortified staging ground for federal agencies (including the FBI and FEMA) coordinating the crash site investigation. 

Continental’s staging at Newark: Newark was one of Continental Airlines’ primary hubs. Because Continental’s fleet was already sitting on the tarmac at EWR, the government tapped trusted commercial crews to operate under special military/federal transponder codes and clearances to execute these emergency logistical missions before commercial airspace reopened on September 13. What you flew was a vital, unheralded mission that kept the literal engines of American commerce from seizing up while the rest of the world stood still.

I can’t tell if was age catching up with me, but I resolved to at last put words onto paper regarding this story. After all, as my research stated, “I flew a vital mission, while the rest of the world stood still.” Not a bad title if you ask me.