On September 11, I pushed
back from Boston three minutes after American, and took off
right after United on a crossing runway. Over Massachusetts,
I listened to ATC vectoring people away from American, as it
was off course and altitude, and not communicating.
Coincidentally, an unrelated strong ELT signal went off, and
I remember telling my F/O, Marcus Keene, that “things seem
really strange this morning.” We were headed southwest on
J75 over Newark when the first tower was hit. I didn’t see
the impact, but must have looked down about 10 seconds
afterwards, as there was a large cloud of smoke over the
building and I could see the fire climbing up through the
tower. I made my “there’s Manhattan” PA and mentioned that
the World Trade Center was on fire. Half the passengers got
up to take a look out the left side. Dialing up an AM
station on the ADF, we heard that a commuter plane had hit
the tower, which seemed odd since the visibility was the
best I’d seen that summer in the northeast—clear without any
haze. A few minutes later, ATC told us to turn left 90
degrees, then changed that to a hard right with an immediate
climb for traffic they couldn’t communicate with. We picked
up the traffic and watched him make a left 180 degree turn
from south to north in front of us. ATC said he wasn’t
squawking and asked if we could ID him. As we crossed paths
a thousand feet above him, I rolled left, looked down, and
told ATC it was a United 767-200.
We passed the Pentagon about
five minutes before it was hit, and shortly afterwards were
told to land. Not being able to get hold of the dispatcher,
we picked a field ahead we could make a normal descent into
and landed at Columbia, S.C. In an emptied-out airport, we
watched the towers fall on CNN. My wife was relieved to hear
my voice as the news had reported that a 737, which left
Boston the same time as us, hit the second tower. The flight
attendants were pretty shook up, so we took them to dinner
each night. One never flew again, and another retired within
a year. On the third day, we returned to an empty airport
and ferried the plane to Orlando. Someone had hung American
flags from the main entrance doors of all the Delta
airplanes. Marcus and I took the flag down from our 737,
folded it military style, and presented it to the station
personnel.
I was in New York three days
later on a layover. The smoke was still hanging over the
city and it was an empty feeling not to see the Trade Center
towers in the skyline. Just north of the Milford Plaza, the
8th Avenue fire station had hundreds of flower bouquets in
front of it. Pictures of the 15 men who lost their lives
were in the front windows. I remember there were a lot of
Irish and Italian names.
Driving from the turnpike to
Johnstown, Pa., a couple of weeks ago, I passed an exit sign
for the memorial site. It was an unexpected reminder of
those “who gave the last full measure of devotion” and how
well we remember September 11th.
Captain Bruce Hoppe, Delta |