9/11 - Your Memories?

I was teaching then, just got home from school, switched the TV on and I honestly thought that I was watching a film. When I realised that it was for real I was absolutely staggered and basically couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I was driving past the tramp on the ring road to tip off when it came on the radio that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre. My first reactions were how did the pilot not see it. I assumed it was a small private plane.
A few minutes later they said another plane had gone into the other tower and the penny dropped.
When I got back to the depot the girls came out of the office and said 25 had been killed. I said there will be much more than that.
It doesn't seem like twenty years.

We were in the air at the time coming into Athens Airport, when the pilot came on the intercom to say something along the lines of "I don't know what's going but I've just been told to circle around the islands. I have told them I have not got enough fuel" - very reassuring! When we came into land there was a plane, from a Middle Eastern airline, on the airport perimeter, surrounded by armoured cars. We then disembarked and lined up whilst police armed with sub-machine guns were pulling anyone out of the queue with a non-Caucasian appearance. We did not have a clue to what was going on. When we got to the hotel, I turned on the television and saw what I thought was a film of a plane flying into a building It was all in Greek and I couldn't understand it but recall thinking it was a bit odd when they showed a slow-motion replay. In the mean time my wife was phoning one of our daughters back home and the chilling reality of what we were witnessing on the screen began to dawn on us.

Vivid, vivid memories. Sitting, on a beautiful fall morning, in a first class seat about to fly home to Houston from Baltimore. A bloody Mary in my hand thinking what a great day it was to be alive. Three, four hours later finally touching down in Atlanta to absolute chaos, people everywhere, home guard [?] troops marching right and left, got to see what happened on a TV in an airport bar, spent about an hour or so drinking beer and watching the grim story slowly unfold.

We had apparently flown over the Pentagon, seen clearly from the plane, about ten minutes before it was struck.

Stuck in Atlanta for about a week, no flights, no rental cars, lucky to get a hotel. Hated the place ever since!

I was working for Tesco in a field role at the time and was at head office in Welwyn Garden City, I have family in the States & have been to NY a few times including the restaurant at the top of the Towers. The sheer size of those buildings was something else and to see it unfold left a deep impression with me, nobody said much in the office.

My cousin worked in Manhattan, I contacted him as soon as I could - he was on the street, the first plane flew over him and from his office he saw the 2nd plane go in. He left immediately and got the train home under the river to New Jersey, possibly the last train to leave before everything came to a standstill.

Neighbours of ours were up the Towers a couple of days before and were on the tarmac waiting to fly home when it all started, their flight took off, shortly after that all planes in US airspace were grounded.

Mick - your post is heart rending, I too watch every new programme and am currently watching Turning Point on Netflix. Only today I was thinking would I have jumped or run into the flames knowing there was no escape, it was incredible how many did opt for the former given that only minutes earlier life was as normal.