The Day It Rained Airplanes
This is a dated piece, written shortly after the event, but timeless in the message, I think. For me, it was first-hand, in a detached kind of way, and this a perspective in personal recollection. We all had our place, each of us remember. Tell me what you think - d
I feel so helpless; how I wish there was something I could do. It’s been the most horrible, inconceivably challenging day, and seemed so distant, so disconnected until now; everything so far removed from the real world, surreal events happening to someone other than me. But here and now, in this place, at this moment, I’ve been touched by the human side of the tragedy, and holding this woman in my arms, feeling the sobs that wrack her body, has brought everything home. She and I are two total strangers brought together in chaos, and now share comfort, solace, wordless compassion. I wish there was something I could do for her.
Tuesday, began like any other day, and, at the usual hour, I greeted the morning, fixed some coffee, showered and turned on the television. Working in the airline business taught me long ago to keep an eye on the sky, and I turned to the Weather Channel. Not one for background noise or mindless conversation, especially in the morning, I muted the volume and sat down to my first steaming cup of beans-n-water; hot and black, just the way I like it. I’ve never understood how anyone could add anything to coffee. To me, it's like Scotch with water: there's a certain sacrilege. I just sat with my coffee, there was the forecast of another beautiful day by those talking heads, those self-proclaimed staff meteorologists, obnoxiously familiar weather professionals with perfect hair, perfect smiles and perfect teeth. Whatever happened to the small-town weatherman we used to know.
The phone rang, and I thought about letting the answering machine pick it up; it was probably someone from work, and I wasn’t ready to talk shop. Neither was I in the mood for a salesperson describing the latest something I simply couldn’t live without. But instead, I picked it up and was warmly greeted by my best of friends. She and I called one another as often as we could, reaches to share quality time. She was six-hundred miles away, but it was always like being in the same room, at the same time, talking about the same things.
As I listened, she spoke about everything and about nothing; plans for the day, the children. She also commented on how she wished there was some way the miles didn’t separate us, and I said the same, and as I stretched and yawned sleep from sluggish body, I mentioned the forecast of a beautiful September day. Her voice tickled my ear, images flashed on the screen, and when the segment was done, I fumbled for the remote and began to surf the channels. I listened to her while pictures shifted from weather, to sports, to some carnie named Popiel hawking plastic wares sure to ease the burden of slicing and dicing and carving a beautiful swan out of a radish. He bored me, and I flipped, zapped, surfed and ignored until I found something interesting on CNN. There were the Twin Towers rising majestically above the bustle and endless parade of life in the asphalt jungle. They jutted into cloudless sky, and it took me back to the evening drive from Newark to Hartford, and to my right they rose triumphant, shimmering blue and magnificent. Now on television, weather as perfect on the East coast as here in the Midwest, something was not right, out of place. There was a pitiful, poisonous cloud belching a geyser of ash and debris from the upper floors, and I couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined.
As I watched, I saw the airplane, a 737 I thought, and it slammed headfirst into the second tower in a wretched slow motion of the mind. I saw flame, flesh, steel, glass and drywall vomited from the side of the building, obscenely cascading to the ground far below. There was decadent curiosity, as if I was a detached witness to something unreal, like coming upon a horrible auto accident where you don’t want to look, but you do because something compels you. I watched, amazed, dumfounded, and believed it was nothing more than electronic wizardry, a computer simulation where the producer wanted to show the viewer “what-if.” But then, suddenly, coldly, it was real, the word “Live” burned across the top of the screen. There was no doubt. Was it really real? What was going on?
I said a desperate goodbye, apologizing for the urgent need to call my peers in flight operations. I dialed the number, but it was busy. “Get off the phone,” I thought distantly. “I’ve got something important to tell you.” Several more unsuccessful attempts and I decided to call one of the departure gates. It rang only once when it was answered by Debbie; statuesque, professional, personable and attractive, the kind of person I enjoy being associated with. She loves her job, and is always smiling a smile that genuinely feels welcome, one that shows in the eyes, the voice. I expected to hear it when she picked up the phone, but was instead greeted by the alien sound of a complete stranger.
“Hi there,” I said, trying to sound cheerful in spite of what I’d just witnessed. “How are things going?”
“Oh, David!” Her voice was deep, distant and confused. “What’s happening? Do you know anything yet? What’s happened?
“How did you hear? What’s going on there?” Now I was the one confused. How could this news have traveled so fast? I felt the immediate urgency.
“It’s already been confirmed, David. One of the airplanes was ours.”
I didn’t know, and it shook me, and stunned me into total disbelief.
“ONE of the airplanes? What do you mean, “One” of the airplanes?” I didn’t put it together. I didn’t know there had been two.
“We’re getting reports that the second one, the one that just hit, was ours. We don’t know who the first one was. We’re hearing reports that it was Northwest or American. David, it‘s scary. They want everyone here. Are you coming in?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
It’s a close-knit group like family, and we support each other whenever we can. She didn’t have to tell me; I knew instinctively. Every available set of hands was needed, if only for experience and support.
Controlled panic, and I slammed down the phone, gathered my uniform, ironed the shirt, all the while my eyes glued to that horrifying scene. I fumbled the belt through the loops. I heard every word while slinging the airport badge around my neck. It was unbelievable, indescribable awe as the first tower crumbled, then absolute resignation when the second blasted inward on itself. Mindless - dial the number again. When she answered, I said something I will never forget.
“They’re gone, Debbie. The towers. They’re just gone.”
Searching for the car keys, I swore at the screen and raced out the door, forgetting to switch off the images of a future now uncertain that spilled vulgar from the television. The television would remain on, broadcasting to no one, until the morning of the next day.
In a maddened rush, I drove as fast as I could. Behind me, the glaring lights of a police car ordered me to the side of the road, but when the officer approached my car, I held out my airport badge and he waved furiously. “Go! Go! Go!” I sped off without getting his name. I didn’t have to, but I’d like to thank him someday.
At the airport, I parked the car and raced inside, hurried to the ramp, and shot across the tarmac. To the southwest, I could see the glaring points of landing lights; airplanes lining up for final approach. Out of breath, I entered operations, and the load planner’s desk. The hub of planeside operations, it’s a position of tremendous responsibility; it’s communications central, where balance calculations are done, where procedures are marginalized, where the integrity of safety is ensured. It is also a vital position of coordination where information is received from those who do and relayed to those who need to know. Working in a line-station, our job is to feed passengers to the hubs, airports like Chicago and Denver and Dulles, where the customer can make the connection to domestic or international destinations. Our tasks change from day-to-day, from shift-to-shift; baggage service, plane-side moving bags and cargo to and from the airplanes, the ticket counter or departure gate selling tickets or assigning seat numbers and boarding passes, or load planning. Dallas was our load planner on that day.
Dal is a lifer, a career man who’s been around forever and seen it all. Nearing retirement, he somehow managed to keep a sense of humor, all the while maintaining the professional most that such a dedicated employee could offer. But even now, standing next to him, I saw something I’d never before seen. Like a ship floundering without direction, he had the look of utter loss. His ear to the phone, he was listening intently to an unseen face giving the most arcane facts. When he hung up, there was a weary expression, like someone sitting at his desk a without a break for hours, even though the shift was only half over.
“What’s the latest?” I asked in the most confident voice I could gather. “What do we know?”
“Here,” he said as he handed me the sheet from the teletype, a message short, blunt. The President was addressing the nation about terrorism, and company officials were releasing sparse words about the incident, saying more information would follow. Two airplanes had impacted the WTC, one flying company livery, another has struck the Pentagon, and yet another is reported as missing. Missing! How is an airplane missing? As I read that word, as “missing” seared an unfathomable image, the teletype sprang to life, its words will haunt me forever. Tragedy. Another disaster. United Airlines flight 93 has just crashed in Pennsylvania.
“Here they come,” he said, breaking the silence. “The FAA has grounded everything. All flights are ordered to divert to the closest airport. I just spoke with the tower, and we’re about to get a bunch.”
“Are we ready?” I asked.
“As ready as we’re going to be.”
Horses broke from the gate, five, eight, or ten of us on the run from operations to the ramp. In the blindingly clear sunlight, I was unexpectedly struck by the hideous contrast between the most perfect weather and the absolute, contemptuous irony of reality. Up in the sky was airplane after airplane circling the field awaiting landing clearance from the tower, airplane after airplane stacked one on top of the other lining up on final approach, and on the ground, the same thing, as airplane after airplane taxied by in search of parking. It struck me, and I wondered in awe.
Each airline brought their airplanes to the terminal, each airplane unloaded of precious holdings, and, when it was done, each airplane was emptied and moved away to make room for the next. I heard somewhere, sometime later, that our airport was the second busiest in the country that day, behind Memphis, outdoing even Chicago or Atlanta. Each of us was lost rushing from one plane to the next, everyone with unspoken assignments, each with a role to play. I was making my way from the ramp at C-1 to C-3 when the radio crackled.
“Can you meet me in operations?” It was the shift supervisor.
“Sure. Be right there.”
Entering the office again, I found him with local officials from the FAA, Airport Police, Airport Operations, involved in a discussion of uncertainty and confusion, and he looked at me and pulled me to the side. An airplane was just landing, and the captain was calling for someone to meet them on arrival. It was urgent, and it fell to me. I told him that I was on my way.
The 767 was guided in, the passenger bridge positioned, and when I opened the cabin door, the ashen face of the purser greeted me, and asked me to step into the cockpit. The captain needed to see me. Carefully moving past exiting passengers, I made my way to the flight crew’s office, nodded at the first officer, then looked at the captain. Usually there is something going on, shut down lists being checked, radio chatter, banter between two co-workers, but not today. The small, confined space was absolutely saturated with eerie quiet of two people who didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to even think. I knew how they felt.
“Captain, I’m David,” I said, hoping to reconnect the disconnection. “What do you need?”
He turned to look at me, and I saw the look of utter futility; eyes fogged and tired, mouth hung open, pallid skin the color of plaster. I had to strain to hear him, leaned close to him, he spoke so softly.
“If ever I made a mistake, David,” he said, “I’ve made one now." He looked right through me, shook his head and said, “I didn’t know. I just didn’t know." He apologized. He said he’d explained to the passengers the need for immediate landing, and described the way he’d relayed what he thought was relevant information to them. He told them all he knew about the events on the East coast. Then he found out that one of the passengers on the airplane that was lost in Pennsylvania was on his way to bury a loved one on the West coast, and that the dead man’s sister was on this flight. Because of him, she knew that her brother was gone. Someone needed to talk to her, to be with her, and the captain needed for that someone to be me.
It was hard to meet her, to comfort her, to offer what little solace I could. Never in my life can I forget the feeling of her arms around my shoulders, or the feeling of her agonizing sobs. And never will I forget the pain in that captain’s eyes as he asked what he did of me.
In a bumbling ballet of controlled movement, we met airplanes and parked airplanes and unloaded airplanes and pushed airplanes away from the gates to make way to do it all over again. There was no plan in place, no contingency to handle so much at once. We just did what we had to do, and it was the longest day I have ever known, the most horrible, confusing, angry day of my life. Our world was changed in an instant as the values of security and complacency were forever challenged. Civilized society was altered in the blink of an eye, and it, and we, will never be the same. It was a day of terror, confusion, hatred and death, a day we witnessed the passage of innocence.
It was a day I held a trembling woman I never knew, in a moment I will never forget.
It was the day it rained airplanes.
indydavid
11/08/2009
