WEBVTT - VECTOR 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:07.160 On the morning of nine eleven, there were more than 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:10.680 four thousand aircraft in our nation's airspace, with hundreds more 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.840 inbound from other countries. After initial hijack attacks, the Federal 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:19.440 Aviation Administration's National Operations Manager in Virginia began to systematically 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:23.280 close the country's airspace, beginning with a Tier one ground stop, 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.560 which covered New York, Boston, Cleveland, and Washington, d C. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.600 In the airplanes. Now, we're not letting anyone go right now. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:35.000 Can't a good move. Uh, we're waiting to any When 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.120 I brought up on everything, Uh, there's the second planet 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.080 that hit the world paid center stop all the parts 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:47.519 that were a m Eastern time. All commercial aircraft were grounded, 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.120 and those flights already airborne were ordered to land. Military 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.200 jets were given permission to shoot down any aircraft whose 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.840 pilot did not acknowledge contact. It was the first time 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.320 in history a complete airspace closure had been ordered. I 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:03.040 foresee that we probably need to do. We need to 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:04.680 talk to f a A A. We need to tell them 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:06.440 if this stuff is gonna keep on going, we need 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:11.360 to take those fighters. Put him over Manhattan. Okay, that's 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:14.520 the best thing, that's best play, right, here, so corner 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:16.720 with the f A. Tell him. If there's more out 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:20.199 there but which we don't know, tell Boxy Scramble, Langley 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.320 sent him in the same location. Battles battle stations are 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:30.199 Scramble battle stations only. Langley. Okay, this is who's up there. Langley. Okay, 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:32.480 you're listening. Well. I told the FD so far we 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:36.360 need to get those fighters lang because we don't know 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.960 how many guys are out of black couldstity too, could 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.280 be more. This is nine eleven, two decades later. I'm 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.200 Steve Gregory in Los Angeles. On the morning of nine eleven, 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.440 air traffic controller part Avery was headed into work. It's 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.240 in Palmville, California. UM. It's about a ten minute drive 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.000 from my house that particular morning. UM. For whatever reason, 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:58.520 I didn't listen to the news in the morning. I 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.560 didn't listen to the radio on the on the way in. UM. 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.480 So the first thing I noticed that was a little 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.400 unusual was the security guard who I had known for 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.799 fifteen years, made me stop my car and actually look 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.680 at my ID badge, which normally she she would have 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:15.680 just waved me in. I didn't think a whole lot 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.799 of it until I walked in the building, and uh, 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.320 I just saw the shock of people running around screaming. 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:24.480 The only thing I could think of was that it 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.160 must have we must have had a horrific accident somewhere 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.000 in our space. When did you know the scope of 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:32.160 what was going on? So I walked up to my 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:36.080 friend Dave and asked him what was going on, and 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:38.679 he just gave me this crazy look, like you don't 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.960 know what happened? And I said, well, no, I just 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:42.680 got in here a few minutes ago. This was just 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.720 before six o'clock, so the first plane had already hit 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.200 at that point. We just started speculating it had to 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.040 have been a small aircraft. There's no way an airliner 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:54.079 would have crashed into the World Trade Center. There's you know, 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.160 a pilot is not going to do that, and hijacker 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.400 is not going to do that. So we just assumed 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.920 that it was one plane. But apparently back East, what 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.440 I've gathered over the last twenty four hours kind of 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:07.880 re listening to some of the tapes was that they 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.040 did know that American eleven was hijacked, and they did 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.440 know that American eleven was the aircraft that hit the 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:15.400 World Trade Center, but nobody else knew it out on 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.000 the West coast for sure. So once you were made 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.080 aware of the sort of the gravity of the situation, 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.280 what were next steps. Well, shortly after six is when 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.240 the second plane hit. And then once we saw that 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.080 or heard about that, we knew that it was a 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.679 terrorist attack. It just was too much of a coincidence 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:34.680 that two airplanes would do that, and uh, we started 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.400 to um on our own talk about stop ground stopping 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.400 all the aircraft in l A Center's airspace, and the 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.040 big airports would be l A X of course, Las Vegas, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.680 San Diego, Burbank, and Ontario. Within about thirty minutes, we 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:51.840 got a call from the what's called the command center 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:56.680 back in Herndon, Virginia, and they basically said, every airplane 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.640 has to land, every airplane is going to stop. And 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.920 that's when I would say all hell broke loose because 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:08.360 it was just something we had never anticipated. It was craziness, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.280 and the pilots were a lot of them did not 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.400 know what was going on, and there were some very 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.400 interesting conversations with these pilots, like, for example, an airplane 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:19.760 that had taken off from l a X twenty minutes 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.200 prior to this shut down. Probably halfway to Las Vegas 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.200 was now being let's say, going to London was now 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.120 being told to land in Las Vegas, and the pilots 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.400 that didn't know what was going on were arguing basically 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:35.960 like why why am I landing in Las Vegas. But 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.000 then probably five or ten minutes, everybody got the word 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.920 through their their company that can communicate to the flight deck, 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.640 and uh, everybody was cooperative. Everybody was just going along 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.040 with the plan. What kind of complicates things that a 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.159 lot of people don't realize is that if you're on 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.040 a flight of more than four or five hours, you've 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:54.839 got a dump fuel before you can just go land 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.800 and aircraft, so we had hundreds of aircraft that had 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.360 to dump fuel and u The coordination on that was 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.040 very complex because we had to vector airplanes away from 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.160 populated areas to make that happen. How many planes are 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.279 we talking about, bart So there were four thousand aircraft 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.640 roughly in the United States, and yeah, we had we 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.000 had a lot of aircraft that were either that had 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:20.480 just taken off or that we're coming from let's say, 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.520 across the Pacific Ocean from Europe up through Mexico, what 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:26.080 we had to do with all the airplanes in the 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.520 air that were coming towards US is not allow any 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:33.320 aircraft coming from Canada or from Mexico. We we just 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.919 stopped all those aircraft from coming into US airspace. The 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.320 only airport planes that we couldn't divert were the ones 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.880 coming from say, Hawaii, because there's no place for them 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.400 to land other than you know, the West coast somewhere. 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:46.480 Although some of those airplanes I know were diverted up 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.800 into Alaska, which we thought at the time made more 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.200 sense than trying to not knowing you know, which airplane 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.840 could have a terrorist and which one doesn't. But within 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:59.320 an hour, um, we have a we have a in 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.080 traffic manage when we have a huge television screen that 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.160 shows every airplane in the United States, and like I said, 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.839 I believe they are about four thousand, within an hour 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.200 or so, almost every single one of those planes had 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:12.240 just disappeared. It was they were all on the ground. 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:15.680 Just shocking to see that the only airplanes that were 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:20.520 left was air Force one, and all over the country 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.080 there were f sixteens that were orbiting around the big 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:29.000 major cities. The other thing that was very spooky was. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.520 We have these things called ghost targets, and a ghost 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:37.320 target is when an aircraft loses its transponder, the computer 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.440 projects based on its you know, it's route, that it has, 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:42.880 its aut tune, and it's and its last known ground 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:45.599 speed and and it and it keeps this data block 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.160 kind of floating. And so I believe it was the 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.240 aircraft that hit the Pentagon. They I don't think they 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.200 realized for a while that that aircraft had been lost. 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:56.960 And so here in the out in the Midwest, we 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.680 see this ghost target just ominously coming towards the West coast, 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.320 and uh that that gave us a big chill for 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.000 quite a while, until later on they figured out that 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.880 that was just a ghost target. Obviously we know now 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.760 twin towers were hit, Pentagon was hit, and then the 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.360 plane that went down in Pennsylvania. It had its target. 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.320 I've always known here on the West coast that Los 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.440 Angeles is always a very vulnerable target. That had to 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:23.800 be going through your mind too, because you had l A, 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:27.520 You've got San Francisco along the western seaboard, You've got 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.680 a lot of potential there. Absolutely. The other thing too, 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:32.920 is that twenty years later we looked back. We know 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:35.400 all the facts pretty much of what happened, but you know, 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.240 within thirty minutes to an hour after that that those 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.320 first planes hit, nobody knew what was going on. For 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.120 all we knew there was a hundred planes that had 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.320 terrorists on them and and they may have been coming 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:49.520 from you know, Japan, coming into l A. And we 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:52.720 had to take those airplanes. And it was scary until 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.520 every airplane was on the ground and we had resolved 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.720 that ghost target issue, it was it was very scary 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:01.360 to look at that. You were talking about all of 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.840 the planes that had to dump fuel and you had to, 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.280 as you say, vector them away from populated areas. How 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:09.760 does one go about dumping that much fuel from the sky? 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.120 Where do they dump it at? They actually dump it 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.160 over land. My understanding is that if you're up high enough, 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.000 it just dissipates before it actually hits the ground. But 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.080 some of those aircraft were down, you know, relatively low, 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:24.000 and so we had to take them out kind of 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:25.280 out in the middle, maybe out in the middle of 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:31.240 nowhere so speak, and throughout just away from populated areas. Obviously, 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:34.200 that's not a good thing to have fuel dumping down 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.360 on over downtown l A, etcetera. Sure, so they knew 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:39.320 they were having to dump it for the purpose of landing. 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.960 So it would have been a very last minute thing, 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:45.360 you know, in their part too. But it's also a 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.240 very standard thing. When when an airplane declares an emergency, 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.120 which happens all the time, you know, they lose an 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.360 engine or whatnot. The first thing that pilot tells the 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.240 air traffic controllers says, hey, we have to dump fuel 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.160 right now. And you know, if they're out over the ocean, 0:08:58.200 --> 0:08:59.959 that's just taking off from l A X, No big deal. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.520 I just dumped out over the ocean. And it doesn't 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.080 take that long, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes too, and 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.840 they know how much fuel the dump where they're okay 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:10.400 to land the aircraft. The reason they do it is 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.560 because of the weight of the aircraft. They can't safely 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.400 land an aircraft that's got you know, half a million 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:17.760 pounds of fuel on board or I'm not sure how much. 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.000 That's probably an exaggeration, but a lot of weight is 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.120 in that fuel. How many airports were in your jurisdiction, 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.000 Las Vegas, all the all the so Cal airports um 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.199 Bakersfield to the to the kind of the Northwest. I 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.000 mean that includes like the major airports in the smaller 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.800 the municipal reports as well CORECT. Every every airport was 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.680 how many runways do you think you were overseeing over 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.600 a hundred? And then did you have situations where you 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.120 had like some fifty sevens and other large commercial carriers 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.160 having to land in on runways they were not accustomed 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.319 to know. We are well aware of which airports can 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.679 you know, because we are trained in emergency procedures where 0:09:57.720 --> 0:09:59.720 an aircraft is in distress and has to land at 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.000 the new orst airport and we're obviously not gonna let 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.640 at seven try to land at Whiteman Airport. I think 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:09.520 Las Vegas actually bore most of the brunt because a 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:13.640 lot of our traffic flow goes up towards Las Vegas area. 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.840 Any flight that's going to Europe to the most of 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.040 the East Coast airports are going to go right over 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.640 Las Vegas. And looking back on it, the guys and 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.400 gals on the ground in Las Vegas must have just 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.840 had a nightmare on their hands because not only could 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:33.360 no airplanes depart Las Vegas, all these airplanes were landing 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.800 in Las Vegas, and God knows where they were parking 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.080 all those airplanes, but we my guess is we put 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.800 fifty a hundred airplanes down in Las Vegas and you 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.319 did all that in an hour. In an hour, so 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:48.360 then what we, like probably every American, were in just shock. 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.959 We were just speechless. We I remember looking at my 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:56.120 radar scope and thinking, I am never seen a blank 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.240 radar scope in my life. I mean, I'm talking about 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:02.040 hundreds of thousands square miles that control just a fighter 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:06.560 jet or two and just no airplanes. And I think 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.240 we just tried to talk it out and make try 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.960 to make sense of it. At that point, probably every 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:15.439 controller in our facility, and there's about on shift that morning, 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.040 they were well over a hundred controllers and we were 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:20.880 popping in and out of the TV room just try 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:23.240 to try to pick up snippets of what was going on, 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.400 and um, you just couldn't make sense of it. It 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:28.760 was just something that just did not compute in our minds. 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.400 As is there traffic controllers, You're never trained for something 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:36.280 like that. It's just it's absolute craziness what we saw 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.720 that morning. Interesting though, you are trained to handle the 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.720 worst case scenarios though, because you're dealing with people's lives 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.360 all the time, but on something on this kind of scale, 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.520 I'm sure it's like many others in the role, get 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.800 the job done first, process it later, correct. It's it's 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:54.840 something that's ingrained in us. You know, we're you know, 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.640 we all act like we're macho, and you know, we 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:04.800 we we see people unfortunately dying aircraft accidents. UM. For example, 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:06.520 about a year and a half before nine eleven, I 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.160 was working the day that Alaska to sixty one crash 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:11.920 in the Pacific Ocean. I wasn't controlling the plane, but 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:14.840 I was at a scope nearby, and I was watching 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.240 the data black and I watched how fast that aircraft 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:19.880 is senator at the end, and I just I was 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:21.920 shaking when I got off the sector. You know. But 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:23.760 but you're cool and you're calm if you listen to 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.160 the controllers voices that we're dealing with nine eleven. UM, 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.199 so proud of those folks, you know, just the way 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.800 they did their job. But I guarantee they were shaking 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.320 and probably sobbing, you know, within an hour of what 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:38.680 and and a lot of us were just trying to 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.360 deal with it. And you know, there's no grief counselors 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:43.000 to come around, and you're just you're just on your 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:47.120 own looking back on it. Um, boy, it was just 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:49.840 terrific what we saw. How do you balance with what 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:51.920 you were looking at on the scope, what you were 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:53.960 seeing on the television, and kind of what you were 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.920 discussing amongst yourselves. Well, air traffic controllers always want to 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.760 try to know everything that's going on, and so we 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.360 were just you know, digging out pieces of information we 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.880 could find on on the news or hearing, hearing what 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:14.760 other controllers, you know, theories were, and um, I don't know, 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.440 I don't I don't even know how to answer that question. 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.760 It was just it was tough. It's hard for me 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.880 to even talk about this. It's just all coming back 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:27.760 into just a horrible situation. Well even twenty years later, 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:30.760 but you're doing it was a very visual job and 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.240 a very visceral job. So even twenty years later, does 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.440 it feel like it was yesterday? It does? It does, 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:39.959 especially you know, going back and listening to some of 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.160 the tapes, it just brought back bad memories and it 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.120 seemed like it was not twenty years ago. It seemed 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.320 like it was very recent. So you were talking about 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.000 when the scopes were clear, you said other than military 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.120 you were listening. Did you get to hear the orders 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:59.320 coming from your headquarters about the permission to shoot down 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.679 martial aircraft? They didn't acknowledge. No, I don't recall ever 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.719 hearing that, And I think it's because we were scrambling 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.079 so hard to get all these aircraft on the ground 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.040 and in our particular airspace l A Center, we had 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.400 no aircraft in the air, so there was that was 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:19.760 kind of a mood point for as far as we're concerned. 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:22.920 I know that, I know that happened, but and they 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.600 never got down to our level. That must have been 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.720 pretty disturbing to see the only dots on your scope 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.680 were military. Do you remember about how many um? I 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.040 remember that they were all F sixteen's um. They were 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:39.960 all scrambled from some of the so cal military bases, 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.160 and at any given time they were they were always 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:46.960 in the air. They were in the aven probably four 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.200 or five in the Southern California area. That's got to 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.720 be pretty spooky, very spooky. It's I mean, it felt 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:55.160 like the end of the world. To be honest with you, 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:57.760 we didn't know. I didn't know if I was gonna 0:14:57.760 --> 0:14:59.440 have a job. I didn't know. It just seemed like 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:01.480 the world was coming to an end. It was that horrific. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.320 Were there any specific challenges on getting a plane to 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.440 the ground where there was just not enough room or 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.760 a pilot didn't know what they were doing, or yes, um, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.160 all the planes got to the ground safely. Um. Some 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.160 of the foreign air carriers, for example, English is not 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:20.120 their first language, and even in a normal situation sometimes 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:23.800 there's a communication problem there. So those would have been 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.440 the flights that probably would have been the most difficult 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.760 to handle. I can't think of any specific things that 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.040 I saw, but it just seemed like once everybody was 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.680 on board with what was going on, it was handled 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.640 very well, and there weren't really any difficult situations that 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:41.000 I'm aware of. That there had to be a lot 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.840 of disbelief, And then I remember hearing some chatter saying 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.720 is this a drill? And then or is this real? Right? 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.840 That that did happen too, and getting pilots to sign 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.400 on that's true, that's I didn't thought of that, but 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.000 I'm sure some of those pilots were wondering if somebody 0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:00.120 came into our place and stole the mics. But I 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.360 think pilots know when they're talking to an a real 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.320 air traffic controller. Um, there's just a way we speak, 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.160 a way we communicate, And I think they would have 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.960 been suspicious if if something weird like that had happened. 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.560 So I I really don't think for very long they 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.960 believe that this was any sort of a hoax or drill. 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:23.720 You don't. You don't tell a guy going to London 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:25.680 that you're going to land in Las Vegas right now, 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.200 because just trust me, you have to land in Las Vegas. 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:30.720 You're just gonna do it. And the other thing, too, 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.560 is pilots are just trained to listen to us. I mean, 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:35.440 it's it's it's a little bit of an ego trip 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.800 being in air traffic control because you're telling these guys 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.640 what exactly what to do. So now the planes are 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.040 on the ground, you're kind of making sense of all 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:46.640 of this, what happens next? I mean, how long was 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:51.080 it like this so that that whole first day we 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:53.360 were just all in the days we're sitting there. I 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:55.800 don't know why we were sitting at our sectors, but 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.080 I just remember to describe what a sector is. Sure, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.280 a sector is um a specific speed piece of airspace 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.760 that a particular controller controls. And at ELI Center, I 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.119 believe there were about your air cubicle. It's like an 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.399 air cubicle and it's literally like this geographic area. And 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:15.280 once once that airplane crosses this line, he's now in 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.440 the next sector, and we do what's called shipping the aircraft. 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:20.359 We change the frequency and tell him, Okay, now you're 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.240 gonna talk to Sector three over here. I'm Sector four, 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:28.119 see you later. So just silence, staring at scopes, wondering 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.920 what's what's what's going to happen next. The next day 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.199 when we all came in for some odd reason, they 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.119 didn't really cut the staffing down. They just everybody just 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.640 came back into work the next day and once again 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:41.639 we just sat in front of blank raid our scopes 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.919 and um So. One of the things that happened to 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.200 me that really to this day twenty years later, um 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.840 um just really affected me bad. Um So. I was 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:57.720 in traffic management. I think it was day three and 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.520 the ground stop was still in effect. It's just the 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:03.560 f sixteens in the year, and I get a call 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:08.080 from a pilot on the ground in Lake Havasu and 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.960 he's a lifeguard flight and UM. He told me that, UM, 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.320 look he's got a very sick passenger on board. He 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:18.399 needs to get this passenger to Las Vegas immediately, and um, 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.640 lifeguard flights are top priority. The only one above him 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.160 really is an emergency or air force one. It's it's 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.080 just like an ambulance going down the street and everybody 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.400 moves out of the way. So this guy probably could 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:32.960 have been in Las Vegas within twenty minutes. I believe 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:35.960 it was a lear jet. And UM, I told him. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.720 I said, look, I'm gonna call Virginia and ask, but 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:43.000 I'm almost positive that the answers for you. Unfortunately it's 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.840 gonna be no, but I'll call you back. So I 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:51.040 called Virginia. UM, and the guy said, you know, I 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:53.399 don't think so, but let me let me see what 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:57.760 we're doing with these lifeguard flights. And I waited. I 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.560 called the guy back and have us to the pilot. 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.080 I told him, like, I'm still waiting. I'm so sorry, 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.560 UM hanging hanging there for me. And about a half 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:07.680 hour went by, and I remember, this guy calls me back, 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.320 and it's chilling what he said to me. He just says, um, hey, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.280 um art just disregard that we lost our passenger, and 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:18.639 looking back on it, there's nothing we could have done. UM. Also, 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:21.359 at any given time in l A Center air space, 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:25.280 for example, there's probably one or two lifeguard flights an 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.960 hour there there, you know, going from place to place, 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:31.800 most in most cases, I believe, taking critically injured people 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.159 to hospitals. And so for those few days that the 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:38.240 airspace was shut down, god knows how many people probably 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.600 lost their lives. It's just another casualty of nine eleven. 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.200 I didn't even think about that, so that the ground 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.800 stop impacted medical transport. Absolutely nobody was in the air 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.520 except for those six When did it finally start to 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.040 open up? You know it? As I recall, it was 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.760 about four day four or five that they slowly started 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.399 to kind of open it up. And one of the 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:03.840 things that struck me as kind of odd was that 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:08.479 one of the early restrictions that was lifted UM was 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:13.080 on UM crop dusters, and I thought, okay, crop dusters, 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.960 how about lifeguard flights too. I believe lifeguard flights were 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.959 also released pretty early on. But apparently crop crop dusters 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.480 are pretty vital to our countries crops, and they weren't 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.000 allowed to fly for three or four days, and I 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:28.480 found that interesting. But I think I think probably on 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.240 day five we were kind of back to normal. But 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.760 of course there were not a lot of airplanes in 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:35.800 the air for a long time after nine eleven. It's 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.200 just took a long time to kind of get back 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:41.960 to normal. How many years after that did you continue 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.240 to work. I retired in two thousand seven, so about 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.080