BiZniZzY

It was a perfect day. No joke, bluest sky you've ever seen on the east coast. No clouds. At all.

This is all paraphrasing, vague, and only partially remembered. I've spent a lot of time repressing this shit. So if it's not totally accurate, I apologize...

It was the morning departure bank, business as usual. I was working ground control, about 20 planes give or take on the frequancy, making their way to the runway. Very routine. The first thing I personally noticed, was white smoke coming from the top of the North tower. It appeared to be steam. I was pretty new at the time, so I didn't say anything. Especially since no one else seemed to mind. It started "steaming" more and more, so finally I coudln't hold back any more, so I asked a long time veteran controller, a good friend of mine, who was working as a coordinator, what the heck was going on with the north tower. He jokingly told me to "shut your mouth and get back to working your planes dirtbag" (typical New Jersey way of responding to your friends...). then said he thought it was just the A/C units firing up on top of the tower. The morning condensation sometime steams off them when they do whatever they do.

Anyways, now everyone noticed that something was up. It was progressively getting worse, and now were starting to see some flames... On a whim, we start wondering if a plane might have hit the tower. Based on nothing, simply speculation. The supervisor, then called the tracon and asked them if they might be missing a plane. They said their was a small plane missing, no big deal. So he said, "I think we found your plane..."

They hung up, and all hell broke lose. I was a little out of the loop, because I was busy working. But suddenly there was a telecon. The supervisor at the time, in what seemed like five minutes, had EVERYONE on a speaker phone. Tracon, Center, Command Center, FBI, CIA, NSA, Port Authority, some other scary people.... Anyways, it was all some real time, serious shit. Anyways, rapidly we realized it was an air carrier, and there were more. We heard the call sign of one of the air craft, and pulled him up on a TSD (displays all the airborn IFR aircraft). I was a little busy at the time, but I remember looking back, and wondering why everyone but me was standing around this thing. So I look back, and see they have an aircraft tagged up. That's when I realize he's really damn close and we should be able to see him out the window. So, I look up, and there he is. I pointed at him, and said "there he is!" so everyone would look up basically, and stop huddling around the phone and TSD.

And, well, the rest is history. He dove down, banked hard, over the Verazano Bridge, made a few adjustments, and plowed into the south tower.

Shortly there after, we went to ATC 0. Whatever that was. They told us to send all the aircraft on final back to the new york tracon, and send everyone on the ground back the ramp. Now, we had nothing to do but watch the towers, and try to help all the helicopters do their thing.

It was a very long day. Anyways, with nothing coming in or out, people started wanting to go going home. So myself and one other person I think, the supervisor, stayed so people could go home and be with their families. The next couple day were a grind. It was just a few of us coming in basically, to work the helicopters in and out.

Anyways. It sucked. It eventually got better. Sorry, I need to take a break for a bit. I'll try and come back and answer some more questions later.

I read him his departure clearance/routing. I might have taxi'd him for take off too. If not, a good friend did. A very good friend of mine cleared him for take off.

I'm a pilot, or was, at one point. Anyways, first rule of flying, find a safe place to crash. Hijack never crossed my mind, initially. I honestly thought somehow the GPS system got screwed up, or, and I hate saying this, some controller went rogue and did some shit. I truly hate saying that. But one time, a loooong time ago, while jump seating to JFK in a VERY large aircraft.... the pilots blocked all the windows with maps, so the sun wouldn't blind them. Cool, right? Bricks were shat. Anyways, fast forward a bit... So as it's all going wrong, of all the implausible possibilities, the instant it the second plane hit, that seemed the most plausible to me. No way would a pilot, let alone a couple of them, drive their planes into the towers.

I still, to this day, feel horribly guilty about thinking that.

I was working "Ground Control", or GC. Essentially, ground controls job is to get the planes to the runway, and back.

No idea what the NOTAM said exactly. To summarize, I'm sure it was something like, "Don't fly until we tell you to."

From what I hear, we did a pretty good job getting them down. Especially considering not only had ATC zero never been practiced or trained for, it hadn't even been brought up in casual conversation as a concept.

I started in the Military. Basically, I joined the Marine Corp, my recruiter lied to me and signed me up for some dumb shit, I got to my "school", there was a huge waiting list for said "dumb shit", and they offered me anything they offered. I said let me try that ATC thing... My face when I found out I wasn't gonna get any flashlights or paddles... ಠ_ಠ

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