Tuesday, September 11, 2007

9/11

I was working on THAT September day...

and I remember exactly what I was doing 6 years ago while the tragedy of September 11 was unfolding...
I bet you all do too...

What were all you doing at that time?


Take a look at this pic...

2 Comments:

Blogger elpelso said...

I had worked a morning duty that day... My wife was still at work when it happened (we are both air traffic controllers)... My mother called to tell me an aircraft had crashed into the WTC, and that one of the towers went down... We had just moved into our new house two weeks before, and cable TV wasn't high on the list of priorities, so I couldn't watch the story unfold... My mom deciced to tape it, so I watched it a few days later... I was desperately trying to check out CNN.com, but that site was so busy I didn't manage... When my wife came home that evening, she said it was a really strange experience, as aircraft started coming back from the Oceanic crossings they were to be on, having flown through our airspace westbound only hours before...

As you said, much like the JFK shooting for the people in the 60s, I very well remember that day and we are still living with its aftermath, with lots of sh** going on in the world, and lots of security implications for a lot of people, for the airline industry in particular, but also for us, in our daily lives... Quite an impact that day made... The sudden drop in passenger numbers for a lot of airlines as people were afraid to fly, the financial impact that had, 'causing some long-established airlines like Sabena and Swissair to go under... The historic passenger and traffic predictions were of no use as massive cutbacks resulted in a lot of older airliners being permanently retired in the vast desert parking spaces of the USA, or ending up in the darker regions of the world, aviation-wise that is... Lots of freshly privatised air traffic control organisations felt the crunch as their profit predictions became way too high, and they lost money all of a sudden... Airlines shedding pilots as if they were of no worth all of a sudden... Many legacy US carriers ending up in bankruptcy in order to remedy some of the above... Its impact is still felt to this day...

It's mind-boggling really...

However, six years on, air traffic is increasing at an astronomical (and unsustainable) rate, ticket prices are still very low (despite higher petrol prices), and more people are flying every day... Pilots and aircraft are in chronic short supply, as are air traffic control staff...

This is a weird planet...

Sorry for the rambling... I will shut up now... :-D

Tuesday, September 11, 2007  
Blogger Raf said...

Glad you commented on that, Pelso...
I was at work as well, since I'm working the same shifts of your wife. It was all so surreal, the colleagues silently watching tv in disbelief, the second plane plunging into the building, the people jumping to death from windows, seeing such monumental towers litterally disintegrate, and our supervisor calling everyone back from break as the air traffic returning was going to put a serious strain on our capacity. It was just like a very bad dream, only... it wasn't

Tuesday, September 11, 2007  

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