9/11: An Airline Pilot’s Perspective

Today marks the 13th anniversary of 9/11. While 9/11 affected all Americans, it especially shook up the aviation industry, and forever changed commercial flying as we know it. Re-posted from JetHead, I thought this was very fitting for today’s remembrance.

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This is the most awful day of remembrance and I hate it–but I will always keep faith with those we lost.

From an airline pilot perspective, we’ve lost a lot, never to be be reclaimed. On that day, I had been a captain at the world’s largest airline for over ten years. Then, I used to think of air travel as a modern miracle shared between passengers and crew. That meant freedom for all to range at will across the skies over our far flung nation, coast to coast and beyond. Sure, we took security precautions against crackpots and even political hijackings. But it wasn’t then as it is now: we live with the realization that we are in the crosshairs, targeted by uncivilized, radical and suicidal zealots seeking to use our “miracle” as a weapon which will kill everyone on board in the process.

Now I look at everyone boarding or even approaching my jet to service it with a suspicious eye, watching for signs of malicious intent. Now I seldom if ever leave the cockpit in flight. And now many pilots fly armed with a 9mm handgun.

The shine is off the miracle of flight, replaced with a healthy dose of vigilance and defensiveness. That’s the new reality of air travel post- 9/11. I still grieve–and always will–for those we lost that day. But I go forward, flying in my thirtieth year as an airline pilot, just as I did the week the airlines returned to the air after the atrocious, cowardly terrorist act.

Today I join thousands of my fellow crewmembers, remembering that awful day but flying nonetheless. That’s what we do, that’s what we refuse to surrender to those who wish us ill. In that way we honor those we lost, and commit to overcome the darkness that brought about the tragedy of 9-11. Never forget and, most of all, never give in to those who would steal and destroy our miracle of flight.

Never, ever forget.