A Note to Dr. Laura

In keeping with my 9/11/2001 string I am going to enter into today’s posting a letter that I wrote to Dr. Laura Schlesinger on September 24, 2001. I wrote this letter because I had been listening to a lot of discussion regarding the heroes of 9/11. I believe there were many heroes that day. The police, the fireman and many others who have remained anonymous were all heroes to me.

One group that I found conspicuously absent from those whose lives were affected by the 9/11 attacks was the flight crews of the hijacked airplanes. Little mention of these folks has been made even to this day. In the letter to Dr. Laura I tried to rectify this unfortunate omission.

Dr. Laura read my letter in her opening dialogue, word for word. As she read through the letter she fought back tears, managing to get to the end of the letter just before the break. I listened intently with my children as my salute to the flight crews, poorly written as it was, was read to millions of Dr. Laura’s listeners.

I did not write this letter for any personal benefit. The sadness of the 9/11 attacks stayed with me for some time after they occurred. I wrote this letter to give people an idea of what the flight crews on board those ill fated jets might have been going through and to relate my own experiences to those of the crew members on board those flights.

Here is the letter in its entirety.

Dear Dr. Laura,

I would like to tell you about what I was doing during the disastrous events of Sept. 11, 2001. I wish to help people become aware that there are heroes out there who have, I believe, been sadly overlooked. Namely, the flight crews on board the aircraft that were hijacked.

I am a 747 Captain of a major international air carrier. On the evening of 9/11/2001 I had taken off from Tokyo's Narita International Airport headed for San Francisco not long after a typhoon had swept through the area. We were about 3 hours late as a result of the typhoon but our departure was essentially normal and without incident. Crossing the Pacific Ocean in an airliner requires that aircrews monitor a common frequency for all airliners. It was on this frequency that I first heard of the events that were occurring in the United States The information was being passed to us by pilots from other airlines over the common frequency as the situation unfolded. At this point we were about 6 hours from our destination.

As more information became available and we moved past the initial shock we started to work through our situation as it existed. 6 hours from our destination, over the Pacific Ocean, an apparent terrorist attack on the World Trade Center using American and United Airlines aircraft with very little information available as to how we should proceed. It was passed to all aircrew that authorities in the U.S. had closed all American airspace. Adding to the seriousness of the situation was the fact that we did not know whether or not we had hijackers on board with the intent of taking control of our aircraft.

A moment later we were directed by our company to go to “HIGH ALERT” and take all necessary precautions to prevent intruders from entering our cockpit.

It was at this point that I insured that my First Officer remined focused on flying the aircraft. I summoned the lead flight attendant, or purser, to brief her on the situation. In a case like this a strong purser is vital to the successful completion of the critical tasks that must be carried out. The purser or “lead flight attendant” that was on Flight #28 that night could not have been better suited to the job at hand. As I explained to her what we knew I could tell she was organizing her thoughts and prioritizing about how she was going to handle the flight attendants and passengers. We agreed that briefing just the flight attendants by way of “all call” (our method of talking to all flight attendants without using the public address system) was the best way to proceed. When all flight attendants were on the phones I started to tell them what we knew and what I expected them to do for the next five hours.

I asked them to calmly walk through the cabin observing all passengers and that talk between them was to be limited. They were also told that when they were sitting in their jump seats they were to review their manual sections referencing hijacking. I recall saying to them “This is a sad day for us all but we have people depending on us so let’s stay focused and move ahead with the job at hand”.

In the last 2 hours of the flight and as we sped across the Pacific, not knowing whether or not a hijacking attempt was to be made, I kept coming back to thoughts of how my children must be worried. I forced myself to remain focused and attend to the tasks to be completed before landing. There were many.

It was now time to brief my other two cockpit crew members. Both pilots were highly experienced international aviators so there was not a lot to say. I was compelled, though, to talk with them about what to do if an intruder tried to enter the cockpit area. Armed with two cockpit axes my First Officer and Second Officer agreed that killing any intruders was our only alternative. We discussed who was to strike the first blow and continued to run through various scenarios until it was time to prepare for landing at our destination, San Francisco.

When we first contacted Oakland Center the asked a simple question: are you declaring an emergency? I stated “Negative, we are not declaring an emergency”. Center responded, “If you not do declare an emergency you will not be permitted to land on U.S. soil”. This was understandable considering we were 3 hours late, a large aircraft loaded with people and fuel and we were approaching a large metropolitan area.

As I thought through the idea of declaring an emergency it occurred to me that we had probably been intercepted by American fighter planes. From my experience in the military and sizing up the situation I considered the prospect that it would take little to force these fighter pilots to think I was lying about being hijacked and shoot my airliner down. Declaring an emergency, even if I did not have one, could well have been all the provocation they needed. Even a missed heading or altitude could be all that was necessary.

I knew regardless of my misgivings about declaring an emergency that I did not have that I would not be permitted to land if I did not declare an emergency. I said a small prayer and, following that, said yes, we would be declaring an emergency. I also mentioned to my First Officer that if he was ever going to be precisely on assigned altitude of heading the time was now.

The remainder of Flight #28 was fairly routine save for the fact that there was not another aircraft on any of the radio frequencies that we used to communicate with air traffic control. Those frequencies would normally be quite crowded with chatter. After landing, the term "surreal" best describes the atmosphere as we off-loaded passengers into an otherwise empty terminal.

When I arrived at my hotel room, exhausted from the day’s events, I saw the incredible pictures of the collapse of the WTC and the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon. I cried hard for all of the victims of the disaster unfolding before my eyes. I cried for the people whose lives were lost in the buildings. I cried for the heroic firefighters and policemen and men and women of the flight crews on board the ill fated aircraft.

I knew what my crew and I had just been through and that it paled in comparison to the horror that must have taken place in the cockpits and cabins of the lost aircraft.
These were fine people who had never been trained for the circumstances they were facing and, like my own crew, were forced to make it up as they were living through each terrorizing moment.

As far as the cockpit crew is concerned I am absolutely certain there is not a professional pilot alive that would relinquish control of his/her aircraft without putting up a fight. I know they did the very best they could to save the lives in their care not knowing that their fate had been sealed even before they pushed back from the gate.

Flight crews are funny people. We love what we do and we do it with such overall professionalism and ease that few people know that we are there unless there is a problem. We take our jobs seriously and we know that the lives of every one on board depend on the decisions we make.

I feel it is important to say that in my 35 years in aviation as a Naval Aviator and airline pilot I have never experienced a flight like Flight #28, September 11,2001. I know that my day was nothing, repeat nothing, at all like that of the crew of those four jet airliners.

I still shed a tear from time to time as I think of the families of those crew members lost in the tragedy of 9/11/2001. I try to put myself in the cockpit of those aircraft and imagine what I would have done or could have done were I in that situation. I am certain that the aircrew did everything possible to prevent the takeover of their aircraft.

Dr. Laura, these flight crews are, indeed, the unsung heroes of this tragedy. They died under the most horrible of circumstances trying desperately to protect those in their charge. They left behind wives and children, hopes and dreams when they perished. Please give them a moment of your time. Mention them on your show. Don’t let people forget that they were faced with an impossible task. The outcome was tragic. The effort to stop it from happening was undoubtedly there. Undoubtedly.

Thank you for your time.

Captain M.I.T.