9/11: First Flight Out -- And Back

My wife, Melinda and I, who live in Tarrytown now, were living in Park Slope, Brooklyn at the time, close enough to the World Trade Center for soot from the inferno to coat our car. Those fleeing lower Manhattan walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and through our neighborhood, covered with ash like a scene from the proverbial disaster film. The women wore no shoes. The local firehouse, three blocks away, lost half their men.

But for me personally the most gripping memory came not that day but a week later.

I had to fly to Kansas City for work the Monday after the planes crashed. Airspace had just been reopened a day or so before and at LaGuardia on Monday morning there seemed to be more people with machine guns in their hands than plane tickets.

There were nine passengers on the return flight the next night. It was Tuesday, exactly a week after the towers fell. As we approached New York harbor I had a sudden flashback to several years before, when I was on a late night flight making the same approach -- up the East River, circling around and landing on the short strip of concrete that makes every LaGuardia landing an interesting one. Just south of the Battery the pilot said, "Ladies and gentlemen, those of you on the left side of the aircraft are about to see one of the most stunning views in aviation."

He was of course referring to the Manhattan skyline. I thought then, 'wow, that is so cool. Here's a guy who has done this hundreds and maybe thousands of times -- you don't pilot a plane into LaGuardia your third week on the job -- and he still gets a charge out of seeing the New York skyline.'

Snapped out of that flashback, it was again Sept. 18, 2001 and this time there were no announcements, or any other sounds on that plane. Just silence -- so much silence it seemed as if the engines had been turned off and we were going to simply drift the rest of the way to LaGuardia.

Then, looking down from the left windows we saw the unforgettable scene: bright lights, lots of smoke, and NO WORLD TRADE CENTER.

Once again, for the most awful of reasons, it had become one of the most stunning views in aviation.