atcamaa

You're more likely to be killed in the car ride to the airport than in the plane. Way more likely.

Flying is ridiculously safe. However, I completely understand the fear. You are stuck in a metal tube, can't see forward, pressed up against some sweaty asshole you don't even know and you have to hope the pilots and controllers know what they're doing.

Let me reassure you, the pilots and controllers know what they are doing and the machine you are flying in is completely safe.

Disclaimer: If you die in a plane crash, I didn't talk you into flying.

"My god. I was just talking to those pilots, pilots I may have probably spoken to hundreds of times over the course of my career, and now they're dead."

I felt very violated. That may sound strange, but they had used our airport to do this horrible thing.

Over reliance on automation.

This has been happening in the cockpit for quite some time now, the result of which are computers, not pilots, flying airplanes. This type of automation is reaching the ATC system now and will most likely have a similar effect.

While automation has actually made the system safer, overall. When something goes wrong with the automation, the human responsible may not be up to the task.

I don't think there is any information that I have that is not already available to the public. However, there has been many changes to air traffic procedures when handling hijacked or suspicious aircraft. Those I cannot discuss.

On that day, it was surreal. One the controllers that I worked with that was in the breakroom watching TV, came into the TRACON saying that an aircraft had flown into one of the World Trade Center buildings. He said it appeared to be a large aircraft. Between working the airplanes the controllers on duty discussed how an aircraft could hit a tall building during very VFR (good weather) conditions. Five or so minutes later the supervisor said that Boston Center (high altitude ATC facility) had a suspected hijacked aircraft. Two or three minutes after that, they were reporting that NY Center also had a suspected hijacked aircraft.

At that time we put it together what was happening. Our supervisor called the control tower to discuss stopping all departures. Before he hung up the phone, the same controller from before came in to report another aircraft hit the other tower. Within seconds the FAA Command Center ordered all departures stopped and for every airborne aircraft in the US to be vectored to the nearest suitable airport and landed. For the next 30 minutes we worked frantically and through the confusion to line up arrivals to airports in our jurisdiction (mostly Boston, Logan Airport). And then, something I've never seen in all my years of experience, radar scopes with no aircraft.

FAA Command Center. However, our supervisor was already in the process of stopping all departing aircraft.

Most pilots were very professional about it. They attended to the business of flying their airplanes. Some pilots wanted specifics. If I recall correctly, we were instructed to tell them that aircraft had been hijacked and to ensure their cockpit was secured.