Last Wednesday, an estimated 4.7 million people in the United States got on a commercial airplane, flew somewhere, ate the usual stuff the next day, hung out with friends and family for three and a half days, then got on another plane last night and returned home. That’s an astonishing feat of aviation expertise, security, technology and machines, but it’s nothing compared to the stunning accomplishment achieved on the morning of September 11, 2001. In those ghastly few hours, there was no playbook, no precedent to follow. After the second tower was struck in Manhattan, there were just under 5,000 commercial aircraft in the sky over America and nobody knew which among them, if any, had been weaponized. What followed is a story of grace under breathtaking pressure by the FAA, air traffic controllers, pilots and airline companies across the entire nation. This is what happened.
© 2024 John Oliver
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