An ALPA CIRP volunteer shares his experiences immediately after the tragedy now called 9/11.

Air Line Pilot, March/April 2002, p. 20
By First Officer Rob Neighbour, CIRP Committee Chairman, US Airways MEC

The car was rocketing along silently up the interstate, plowing mercilessly toward an assignment I’d volunteered for—to debrief the widow of a member of the crew of one of the four airplanes involved in the tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, or 9/11. A buddy of mine who is the Critical Incident Response Program (CIRP) chairman for his airline had returned my call almost immediately. I had offered to help in one city in which his airline’s CIRP had no resources at all for the survivors of the attacks. After a couple of calls to clear our calendars of other airline-related CIRP work, the CIRP team mental health professional (MHP) and I met up that very evening and started on our long drive for a visit neither of us looked forward to.

The MHP had warned me that very difficult questions could come up. Just hearing some of these questions from him during the car ride gave me a knot in my stomach. Although I had placed a team of pilots trained as peer support volunteers (PSVs) in each of my airline’s crew rooms to work with company-supplied MHPs, I took this assignment myself because of its expected difficulty and my proximity to our destination at that time.

When the U.S. national airspace system was shut down for a few days, it gave every airline’s CIRP team time to prepare mentally and also to drive to locations where they could do the most good. One US Airways pilot peer, First Officer Stu White, based in Charlotte, N.C., rode a Greyhound for 15 hours. Another couple, Philadelphia-based Capt. Jack Broadbent and his wife, Lani (a spousal support volunteer who was trained to work with pilot widows), drove for 16 hours, not including a border crossing, from an island retreat in Canada.

With PSVs moving toward their assigned positions, I could afford to lend myself and another pilot peer to the two most directly affected airlines, during times when we weren’t busy working in our own crew rooms. Boston-based Capt. Lucy Young, our US Airways MEC CIRP vice-chair, helped out for several days with American, while waiting for our BOS operation to reopen. I sent First Officer Conny Kleissas, based at Baltimore/Washington International, to cover the team of accident investigators working at the Pennsylvania crash site, until a United team could arrive.

No one expected this kind of event. Most airlines have a small team that does the more routine CIRP work, as they have neither the budget nor the ability to keep their peer volunteers current.

We at US Airways were, in some ways, luckier than other airline employees, in that we had a team of great people who are all very well trained and who turned out to be geographically pretty well distributed. Because of close communications with our dispatchers via a company pager system, and our MEC’s Central Air Safety Committee, we’ve had the opportunity to practice our "telephone defusing" skills on a regular basis, maintaining "currency," so to speak.

Individual airline CIRP teams normally count on help from other airlines’ PSVs for the most severe accidents, to help augment and relieve their own teams if the unthinkable were to happen. That model had served us well in the past. How could we have predicted that every airline’s employees would simultaneously be affected? Any ideas of "mutual aid," a term I stole from firefighters, had to go pretty much out the window. And so I was especially glad to pitch in and help, in some small way, another airline’s employees whose needs clearly exceeded our own.

Providing grief counseling to a widow or widower is difficult, specialized work. I quickly discovered that while most of my CIRP training proved valuable, the models we use for performing critical incident defusings and debriefings just didn’t fit. For the entire evening, I was there as a mostly silent pilot support volunteer, letting the MHP do his work. I was glad to have snared this MHP, as airlines had been calling any counselor they could find who claimed to have any background in grief counseling. Experienced, talented MHPs were in very short supply.

Later, USA Today published some debate about whether grief counseling should take place at all after an event such as this. After personally participating in the process, I can say that I think it should be mandatory.

Although unable to alleviate or interrupt the grieving process, grief counselors educate people, arming them with the tools that others have used successfully to deal with their grief. I learned that at times, grief can hit even harder than right after the death, e.g., after the funeral, when family, friends, and pilot volunteers leave, and the survivor is alone. Wonderful, well-meaning people often don’t realize how dependent a survivor can become on his or her "new" support system, only to have it drift away so quickly. If you find yourself providing emotional support to someone who has been strongly affected by the events of 9/11, or the subsequent job losses, I ask you to please continue in this role to the best of your ability. Allow the person to tell you, one way or another, when your support, at that level, is no longer required.

In case you didn’t have a chance to talk to a CIRP volunteer during the days following 9/11, I want to share some of the crew members’ reactions. To protect each individual’s privacy, I won’t divulge the airplane type, the person, or the city involved. Our team has handled about 800 pilots, flight attendants, and other employees, just at our "mid sized" airline.

Given the dozens of debriefings (held as a group with peers and an MHP) and hundreds of defusings (one-on-ones in the crew rooms) that we conducted during the first few weeks after the terrorist attacks, we couldn’t possibly tell you who said what. Nor would we ever divulge that confidentiality.

To help you understand that others share some of the same feelings that you may have experienced, I will relate only comments that I have heard from at least four people. This information may help you understand that you are a pretty normal person who has experienced a highly abnormal situation. You have had some normal reactions to the events of 9/11, or an impending furlough, and need to realize that you’re not alone. Thousands of others have experienced the same things you did.

Because of the vast number of ways in which people process information, each person’s reaction to 9/11 is unique. We differ in background, culture, social circles, work patterns, habits, and life experiences, all of which change the way we react to an incident. Some have friends or significant others who were directly involved in one of the four crashes. Perhaps you recognize the tail number of a hijacked airplane as one that you once flew or worked on. You may have flown with one of the hijacked crew members at another airline, or in the military. These experiences shape our reactions, and give us a little insight into why we’ve all been affected a little differently by 9/11.

In conducting crew room debriefings, your CIRP team heard certain comments over and over again. You may find the following familiar:

1. "They took my safety razor/nail clippers/Swiss army knife/eyelash curler!" I confess that I got a kick out of the last one, trying to visualize a terrorist threatening a flight attendant with an eyelash curler! One person pointed out that security personnel were taking away items that could be used as defensive weapons to thwart a terrorist. The PSVs and MHPs pointed out that, although airport security was doing some really stupid things, at least travel is a lot safer than it was earlier.

As time goes on, loopholes are being discovered and closed. Some of the silliness will go away, leaving us with a much safer working environment. As you know, we are now able to carry some of the previously prohibited items. We just have to give the screening authorities time, and keep pointing out the glaring holes.

2. "Ramp service workers and agents still aren’t going through security." While that was true at some airports, it wasn’t at others. In some cases, they were screened with wands and had lunchboxes randomly searched. In others, they were still getting through security without being checked. As a result, many groups, including ALPA, are calling for one level of security, evenly applied to all personnel throughout the air transportation system.

3. "These guys bypassing security have no background checks." While true in some cases, this loophole should close in the near future. If it doesn’t, you can bet that a ton of people, including pilots, will complain to their managers, their members of Congress, the FAA, and anyone else who will listen.

Interestingly, the ramp service workers that we defused want to be checked. They want to ensure that everyone who is inside the secure area belongs there and has had a thorough background check.

Some people suggested moving all catering facilities onto the field, so that catering personnel and their trucks can be thoroughly checked. How about that guy who fills up the Pepsi machine in the crew room? His van sits right outside, under a jetway, while he’s there. Thoughts such as these have given us all pause, and in some cases, added to our level of stress.

4. "I feel guilty that a group of pilots inflicted this terror." We’ve all felt this to some degree, especially as we imagine how the public now perceives us. Realizing that these were terrorists, not pilots, may help. Their "job" was to incite terror. We have all remarked on how well planned these events were: flying the exact same cockpit design; knowing which airplanes would have the most fuel on board; even selecting a VMC day so that the news crews could easily capture the most graphic and emotionally damaging footage. Focusing on the fact that these terrorists trained to use the Boeings as weapons, just as they’d trained to use box cutters, is most helpful. The terrorists learned enough to do their job. They had no intention of becoming real pilots, which was probably readily apparent to their instructors. I’m just glad that most reporters quit referring to the terrorists as pilots.

5. "My parents called me up and want me to stop flying. They said they’d pay off my credit cards and asked me to move back home with them." I was amazed to hear this so often, though it was mostly from
the younger, junior crew members. I’ll offer the same advice that the MHPs, peer volunteers, and fellow crew members suggested: Don’t let the terrorists win by changing your way of life. If you didn’t like your job before 9/11, think about it for a couple of months. If you still want to quit, then go ahead. But don’t do it now. Don’t quit because of this. Right now, we’re all in an emotionally heightened state. Our new environment has altered our judgment.

Personally, this whole experience triggered a memory of the last time I was furloughed by US Airways. I’d explained to my spouse that when an aircraft generator fails, the electrical system sheds nonessential electrical loads, e.g., coffee makers that use a lot of current, so that the remaining generator/s can easily handle the increased load.

What I was trying to say was, "I’m stressing here. I’m going to start pitching over the side all the stuff that I no longer need to survive. These decisions will be swift and abrupt." For example, I stopped serving as an active Red Cross volunteer. I just didn’t have time to do it anymore. What I failed to consider was how disturbing this abrupt shift was to my other half. I’d turned inward, started making substantial changes to my routine, and cut expenses everywhere. Even little things, like not ordering a beverage when we’d eat out, or dropping cable TV, were quite noticeable to those closest to me. I’m now sure that my significant other lost some sense of security in the process, wondering how to best fit into my "new reality."

This time around, although I shared some of my emotions about my experience defusing pilots and flight attendants, I failed to make myself available for my partner’s own altered realities, fears, and concerns. Given my heightened workload, my other half did not want to burden me and instead turned inward, choosing to bottle things up, which can be very unhealthy.

After day four, I finally figured all this out and mentioned it to an MHP. The MHP told me that he’d noticed during our defusings and debriefings that I was no longer an extrovert. At his urging, I brought my spouse in for a one-on-one defusing. Afterward, the MHP ordered us to go home early, turn off my cell phone and pager, and have a really nice dinner out, just the two of us, without interruptions. This was particularly poignant, as our previous night’s entire dinner was spent with my ear glued to the cell phone.

6. "We should be allowed to carry guns. Instead, they’re confiscating my Swiss army knife, making me take off my hat, jacket, and belt, and treating me like a criminal." We’ve all been here. While I’m an expert marksman, I don’t have a gun in my house. So I guess I’m "middle-of-the-road." On this issue, did you hear about the 30-year-old, reportedly disturbed man traveling on Oct. 8, 2001, to Chicago aboard a B-767, who somehow broke into the cockpit? Being right-handed, if I had a gun in a case like that, I’d have to swing its barrel in an arc past my captain. Having no time to threaten the intruder, I’d probably have to fire my weapon, most likely twice, as I’ve been trained. How would I feel for the rest of my life, having killed a mentally challenged man who suffers from anxiety? Pass. If we were to get some kind of stun weaponry, I’d support that in a heartbeat. Don’t forget that a couple of deadheading pilots and passengers were on this guy right away. The era of passive crew and passengers is gone forever. We travel with a lot of new allies now.