A John Carr Retrospective on 9/11—Part 1

I’ve known John Carr for many years, and I’m proud to call him “friend.”  John Carr was president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) from 2000 until 2006.  John led that organization during both the brightest and the darkest days of its existence, working with FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and valiantly trying to hold off the onslaught brought against NATCA when her successor, FAA Administrator Marion Blakey, all but declared war on her own controller workforce—a topic we’ve covered here several times before.

John has sent to me at my request the full version of a piece he wrote for the summer 2011 edition of NATCA’s newsletter, The Air Traffic Controller (thank you, John), and has graciously granted to me permission to reprint that material here.  As the original, unedited piece runs some 3,000 words, I’ve decided to devote all three of this week’s scheduled blogs to run this fascinating piece in its entirety.  It’s a truly harrowing and inspiring account of what transpired that day, told from a viewpoint you’ve probably not seen.

So, without further ado, Part 1 of A John Carr Retrospective on 9/11:

I had finally found a cup of coffee.  I bought my drink, grabbed my briefcase and settled into a comfortable spot in the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana.  It was just after seven-thirty on the morning on September 11, 2001 and I was waiting for Ray Gibbons, Facrep of the Chicago TRACON.  Together we would be having a telcon concerning his facility.

The lobby had a TV droning CNN in the background and I was focusing on my notes; as Ray crossed the lobby to greet me the announcer intoned something about switching to New York where there had been some sort of explosion or plane crash at the World Trade Center.

I looked up just in time to see the switch to the “network TV chopper shot.”  You know the picture—it’s the one through the bubble with the background rotor noise and the high whine and some announcer shouting to be heard over the din of it all.

But the picture.  Oh my God, the picture.  Smoke was roiling out of the tower and the building looked like it had been whacked with a samurai sword.  The anchor was saying that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center but you could plainly see that the damage was nearly ten stories high and almost as wide as the tower itself.  My mind was racing to make sense of what my eyes were seeing when my cell phone rang.

“John?  Mike Blake. (Mike was the New England RVP at the time and that day he was working the boards at Boston Center.)

“Are you watching TV?” Mike asked.  Odd question, I thought, but I told him that I was.  “Well, that’s American Eleven.”

I said, “Mike, what channel are you watching?  I’m watching CNN!  Something just hit the World Trade Center!”

And then the hammer dropped.  “John, that’s American Eleven that hit the World Trade Center.  We were working him and they hijacked him and he turned around, flew straight south and drove straight into the building.”  I said something unprintable that started with, “You’ve got to be…” and then there was a pause.

“And John?”

I was furiously writing notes at this point, Ray reading upside down and me pointing at the notes and the television.  Ray was giving me his one-eyebrow-up death stare when Mike said, “John, there’s another one on the way to New York.  We lost a second one just like the first one and he’s headed right for New York.”  Then Mike mentioned that the sector working the aircraft had heard the hijackers voices, and they had mentioned having “some planes.”  “Planes, John.  Plural.  Planes.  We’re pulling the tapes now to check it out.”  I mumbled something to Mike about keeping me posted and hung up.

By this point a small crowd had gathered to watch the madness.  I felt utterly helpless.  I think I told Ray something like, “There’s another one.”  Ray said, “What?”  And I explained what Mike had mentioned….that the building we were watching was intentionally hit and that a second aircraft was more or less on it’s way as well.

Moment’s later, as we sat staring at the scene unfolding, the second tower exploded in a fifty story fireball.  One hour later that very same tower fell straight to the ground.  As it began it’s collapse I blurted, “It’s gone.  The whole damn building is going to fall down.”  I don’t know why I said it, but the minute it began I knew it was gone.

It was nine o’clock in the morning in New Orleans, and time for the second day of our union’s very first five-region Combined Regional Meeting to begin.

I contacted my wife, upstairs and pregnant with our first child to make sure she was secure.  I quickly made contact with Ruth Marlin, NATCA’s EVP and the rest of the NEB and we promptly cancelled the remainder of the regional meeting and started making emergency contingency plans.  One of the regions present was the Eastern Region and their home towns were under attack.

Information was now pouring in like staccato machine gun bursts.  Fifteen missing airliners.  A confirmed hijacked Delta jumbo jet being forced down in Cleveland.  East Coast heavy departures streaming towards tall towers in Chicago, Denver and all over the West Coast.  The Pentagon hit.  A jumbo jet missing in Tennessee.  A 757 flying inverted, then crashing in Pennsylvania.  I asked the hotel to put the CNN feed on the giant overhead screen and we convened the meeting on time, announcing that the meeting would not take place but that we would use the space and time to update everyone on information from the FAA as quickly as it became available.

New York Center closed to arrivals.  New York Center closed.  Nationwide ground stop.  Land All Planes.  Jane Garvey, then the FAA Administrator, had departed just the night before on a commercial flight, leaving Bill Peacock, head of Air Traffic, to meet with our representatives on the second day of our meeting.  Ruth and I ran through the streets and alleys of New Orleans to his hotel.

Wednesday:  Part 2