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Sierra Morgan's avatar

When commercial planes were allowed to fly again on Thursday, a wonderful manager at American managed to get me on a flight home when only airline staff were supposed to be flying. Flying from Charlotte to Pittsburgh I did not notice the fighter escorts. I was in my normal flight mode; fall asleep before the door closes. I vaguely remember the pilot next to me saying we were the 3rd flight in the country to be allowed to take off. In Pittsburgh we changed planes and picked up medical evacuees from NY. I looked for colleagues and my intern but didn't see them. An older gentleman across from us was severely injured and was headed to Minnesota for surgery. He was rather out of it. I had my usual emergency row window seat on the wing. I watched as we took off and so was the gentleman's wife. "Harold, you won't believe it, we have the Air Force protecting the plane", she proclaimed. She said he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. I looked at the pilot sitting next to me who then said "pray the people in the cockpit do not sneeze or cause this plane to even so much as wobble or we will be..."; I completed his sentence - shot down. One of the few flights in my 1+ million miles that I did not sleep on.

As I sat on my deck safely back home I watched the planes with their fighter escorts on final approach. My son was watching with me. He said he saw the fighters with my plane and asked if I knew they were there to shoot us down if the pilots did anything wrong. I said yes. Several of his friends' parents flew for Northwest. His paper route was directly under the glide path. Everyone knew what those fighters were for except the media. He asked when I had to go back to work. I said I didn't know since where I was supposed to be working wasn't there any more.

I found my intern in an NY hospital on 18 Sept. He would be physically okay. He said he led two groups of people out of the building. On the 3rd trip the group was told by NYFD to turn around and go back to their offices. Most went back. Him and 5 others pushed past and went down the remaining 20 flights of stairs. The tower collapsed about 10 min after they were out. I asked this 20 year old man why he did that. His reply, "Because that is what you would have done". He was right. I was a volunteer HAZMAT and fire responder. I would have kept going back in until everyone was out. My 14 year old son knew that too. For the rest of the weekend we just sat on the deck and watched the fighters escorting the planes and didn't say a word.

The official story regarding the United flight never made sense. The debris field was too spread out. I lost friends in the Trade Center and on 2 American flights. Little did my son and I know how many more of our friends would die because of Bush#2, pun intended, and all the lies.

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Cindy's avatar

Thank you for continuing to share and including us in the process.

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