Seven years plus 24 hours since all hell broke loose.
That morning I was standing in the dispatch office, tucked away in the basement of Concourse A Terminal 3 at CVG. You had to weasel your way through a couple security doors and go past the Delta crew store to find it. I had a copy of the release on the counter in front of me, my hat sitting next to it, a cup of heavilly-sugared joe in my fist. Captain Parker was to my left, in a nearly identical pose, a Georgia good-ol-boy with half-cut glasses who was one of the two captains that I rather enjoyed flying with. The dispatcher, Al "the pilot's pal" was behind the counter and working with one of our planes that was about to blast off from CLE to CVG. We would be crew swapping with that plane and then taking it to Punta Cana, and honestly I can't remember where the trip was going after that. For some odd reason, the FO didn't make show time and nobody could get ahold of him. Captain grumbled about how the guy was going to make us all late.
Then one of the mechanics comes bursting into the room: Jim Gurley, a red-faced guy with huge arms and a very boisterous laugh, we all called him "Gurley Man." He hollered (yes, he was a southerner) for us to turn on the tv right now and that we "ain't gonna believe this!" The three of us sleepily pointed across the room, the TV was on and the weather channel was up. "No no, the NEWS ya dummies!" and with that he ran back down the hallway. Captain was from Georgia, Al and I were from Ohio, and we were in Kentucky, so we had no idea what the channels were. Al grabbed the remote and just started surfing, and he eventually found the Fox News channel just in time to see a really big plane smashing into a huge building.
"Damn, they're going to be replaying that all day I bet" Then I noticed the "live" tag at the bottom corner of the screen. "Uh, captain I don't think that was a replay...." We noticed that both buildings were belching smoke. By this point the dispatch office, which was rather cramped to begin with, started filling up and the little 13 inch screen had a couple dozen eyeballs staring at it. Our plane was in the air, we could see them on the flight tracker, and we started to get concerned that something might happen to them. Captain and I decided to head up to B Concourse and meet the plane at the gate.
Like most airports do, CVG had several tv monitors that would broadcast CNN. We noticed immediately that every single one of them showed a blank blue screen. "Well why in the world would they do that to the tv?" I was tempted to say something along the lines of them not wanting to incite a panic in the airport, followed by a "duuuuuuh," but decided this would not be a good idea. We got to the gate and went down to the bottom of the jetway, overhearing some of the rampers toss around rumors that 2 more planes had been hijacked, including one over Cleveland which is where our plane was coming from. Captain Parker looked at me and said "Son, I think we just went to war."
The plane finally arrived, and 170 groggy and annoyed-looking passengers came filing out. They had no idea what was going on. The crew followed them, asking us if we knew anything more than they did. One of the rampers then yelled up at us that the airspace was shut down, "Y'all ain't goin nowhere!" As a group, we started back up the jetway to return to the dispatch office. We passed a very frantic looking gate agent, running down the jetway with a walkie glued to his ear, and he barked at us "They just put one into the Pentagon" as he ran by in a blur.
We got back to the dispatch office to find that it was chock full of people with barely enough room to squeeze in a light breeze. I took a place in the back of the room by the coffee pot and mini fridge, being one of the taller people in the room I could still see clearly. I overheard someone talking about how the building had collapsed, and thought that was absolutely absurd. Then I looked more closely at the 13 inch monitor, and indeed there was only one smoking building where there had been two when I was last in this room. It was right around 1030 when the other one came down and the room was as silent as a morgue. The silence was broken a minute or so later by the chief pilot, Captain Clark, who said "Alright boys, get the hell out of here....."
It was a little over a mile back to my car, and I don't think I've ever made the walk that fast in my life. As I came down the little ramp to join the road away from the airport, I grabbed my cell to let mom know I was alright. She was confused as to why I'd be telling her that, so I asked her if she knew what was happening. She said no and that she was running the sweeper, so I told her to turn on the TV. When she asked what channel, I told her it probably didn't matter at this point. A few seconds later I heard a gasp and a thud as her cordless hit the floor.
I got back to my apartment around 1130. My answering machine was blinking on overdrive, crammed full of messages from friends wanting to know if I was alright and hoping that I wasn't working that day. My email inbox was about to burst as well. No sooner was I out of my uniform and into a t-shirt and shorts when the phone rang. It was mom again, telling me she had the week off from work anyways and was in the car heading to Cincy. I told her to bring beer, because I was going to need a lot of it to burn those images out of my head.
A few days later, I think it was Friday, we did our first flight after everything went down. It was a military charter to Cherry Point MCAS, where we would pick up a plane load of Marines and take them to Yuma. I can't remember if they were going to training or coming home from training, but there were about 150 of them. Those military charters were the best, because they did all of my W+B calculations for me and they always brought A TON of food. I remember hearing one of the flight attendants comment about how scared she was to be flying, considering what had just happened a few days prior. I told her to "think about who we're carrying. I guarantee this will be the safest flight we could possibly be on." That got a big laugh from the rest of the crew.
It was barely a month later when I got my furlough notice.
