22 years on
Twenty years ago we woke up to a completely normal September day. By the time we went to bed the world had changed forever.
20 years ago 246 woke up to catch their morning flights including 8 pilots and 25 flight attendants.
2,606 people woke up for work in the morning. 343 firefighters headed off for their morning shift. 60 police officers got up for their morning patrol. 8 paramedics started their morning shift of saving lives. None of them saw past 10:00am Sept 11, 2001. In one single, horrifying moment the world changed
I was in the car driving to collect two of my children from nursery, leaving my 4 month old daughter at home with a friend who had come for coffee, and on the way home, on the radio, what I was hearing didn’t make sense. When I returned home I told my friend and we switched on the TV which had pictures of one of the World Trade Towers in New York on fire having unbelievably have been hit by an aircraft. Nothing made sense, and no one knew what had happened. And then, as we watched in utter horror, a second aircraft flew into the second tower. I remember EXACTLY how I felt watching that happen and I remember switching off the TV and talking in whispers so as not to frighten our small children.
Everyone remembers exactly where they were when they first heard or saw the news that day and it is hard to imagine that twenty years have gone by and all that has gone since.
For some of our aircrew volunteers at Project Wingman, this day was a day of personal loss and although the date is marked every year, this year is all the more significant as troops have now left Afghanistan for the last time. There is no place in a post like this for political comment, but twenty years on, I would like to acknowledge sometimes, time doesn’t always heal, it just means more days have passed since something brutal happened, and that those who lost their lives on 11th September 2001 will and must never be forgotten, and neither will those who have fallen since.
To the families and friends of all crew and passengers onboard AA11, UAL175, AA77 and UAL93, you are in the thoughts of all of us today, and especially in the thoughts of those of us who fly.
#neverforget
May We Never Forget
