Continental Capt. Frank Bushnell Jr. had just flown from Newark to Houston the night prior. He woke up the morning of September 11 prepared to head home to Denver. As he got ready, he turned on the TV and saw news reports of the attacks.

“I was just in Newark the day prior,” he said, explaining how challenging it was to reconcile what he was seeing on TV with reality. “The towers were there just the day before, and then they weren’t . . . I had seen the towers as I taxied out, and then they just weren’t there anymore.”