ALPA and the Aftermath: The Days After 9/11

September 11, 2001, was, as ALPA’s president, Capt. Duane Woerth would later describe it, “the darkest day in the history of aviation.” And it was, in the days that followed, to provide some of the proudest moments in the history of aviation.

A Coldly Orchestrated Plot

The business day had hardly begun along the East Coast of the United States when terrorists seized control of four airplanes—two B-767s leaving Boston and two B-757s departing Newark, New Jersey, and Washington Dulles, all bound for the West Coast—to use as ready-made bombs against two symbols of U.S. economic and military might.

By now, replayed countless times on the television networks, the sequence of events has a sickening familiarity:

• American Airlines Flight 11, with two pilots, nine flight attendants, and 81 passengers, hit the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m.
• United Airlines Flight 175, with two pilots, seven flight attendants, and 56 passengers, hit the south tower at 9:03 a.m.
• American Flight 77, the Dulles departure, carrying two pilots, four flight attendants, and 56 passengers, hit the Pentagon’s southwest face at 9:40 a.m.
• United Flight 93 left Newark with two pilots, five flight attendants, and 38 passengers. It crashed in Western Pennsylvania around 10 a.m., apparently forced down before it could reach an intended target in Washington, D.C.

Two hundred and sixty-one persons in the four airplanes were killed. On the ground, the dead would take days, perhaps weeks to account for. The final toll may never be known.

To some, the attack stirred memories of Pearl Harbor. But its audacity and precision had a frightening new twist: The terrorists were using passenger airliners as their weapons of choice in an elaborate, and coldly orchestrated, plot.

Aviation authorities on both sides of the border reacted with a virtual “lockdown” of the countries’ air transportation system. Air traffic controllers diverted more than 200 flights bound for U.S. destinations to Canadian airports. The FAA and Transport Canada took the extraordinary step of immediately grounding all aircraft and closing down both countries’ airports.

Dispatching ALPA Resources, Without Air Travel

But the shutdown of U.S. airspace to all civil air traffic—the first in history—hampered ALPA’s response to the three crash sites only a little. ALPA’s pilots and support personnel would not have air power to get them where they needed to be. So they used will power.

Master and local executive council representatives, Critical Incident Response volunteers, staffers, and pilots from every airline hit the phones, or hit the road, from wherever they happened to be on September 121 to respond to the crisis.

United’s MEC chairman, Capt. Rick Dubinsky, learning of the hijacking near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and of the air transportation system shutdown, immediately got into his car and drove from his home outside Cleveland to the crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

United MEC vice chairman, Capt. Paul Whitford, helped assemble a “Go Team,” then dug in at UAL Corporation’s Crisis Center in Chicago, working to locate diverted flight crews and helping organize a post-crisis recovery plan.

Capt. Jeff Barath, the MEC’s secretary-treasurer, was airborne from White Plaines, New York, to Chicago, ultimately ending up in Saginaw Bay, Michigan. There, he rented a car and began his 5-hour drive to the ME office in Chicago, where he coordinated the activities of the office, while monitoring the work of pilots on site in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.

The Alaska Airlines MEC kept its offices in Seattle open as a base of operations for pilots stranded in the Pacific Northwest, including Capt. John Cox, ALPA’s Executive Air Safety Chairman, and Capt. Don Pitts, national safety and training chairman for the Allied Pilots Association, American Airlines’ pilots union. From there, and from command posts set up at ALPA offices and at pilots’ homes through the system, accident investigation and security pilots and staff members provided, as Capt. Cox put it, “a coordinated response to an absolutely unprecedented demand.”

As news of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., came in, air safety personnel began compiling a list of available accident investigators and their physical location. As the U.S. and Canadian air space system was shut down, the list became even more critical.

Demands to send “go teams” to each place surfaced early, but when events revealed that the crashes were part of “a deliberate act of barbaric proportions,” as Capt. Cox puts it, ALPA investigators knew the situation would be the focus of an FBI, not an NTSB, investigation

ALPA’s Critical Incident Response Program (CIRP) also coped with the logistical problems of not being able to dispatch its peer support personnel by air.

At first, “we were paralyzed because we couldn’t get our people where they needed to be,” says Capt. Mimi Tompkins (Aloha), ALPA’s international CIRP chairman. But soon those volunteers, too, fanned out from where they were stranded throughout the country, working most immediately with the families of crew members killed in the terrorist attacks, then at bases and with individuals who needed CIRP support.

Capt. Steve Pocock, ALPA CIRP chairman for United, was at a hotel in Dana Point, Calif., with his family, on September 121, waiting to relocate from the United pilot base in Chicago to his new base in California.

By phone, in the days following the crashes, he coordinated the work of literally dozens of CIRP volunteers from many, many pilot groups, both inside and outside of ALPA.

The US Airways MEC dispatched a CIRP team from its Pittsburgh office to the United Flight 98 crash site, Capt. Greg Arikian (TW), who led the CIRP effort in the wake of TWA 800 and who was at home in Connecticut on September 11, was one of the pilots working with the New York-based United pilots on the CIRP efforts there.

“The effort is really no longer airline-specific,” Capt. Pocock notes, adding the CIRP teams and individuals from almost every ALPA-represented airline pitched in at the three crash sites and elsewhere to help pilots cope not only with the trauma of the attacks but with the uncertainty during the airspace system shutdown.

“Quite frankly, we were using everybody. It was truly a systemwide response,” Capt. Pocock adds.

Much of the support was provided by phone, but volunteers found ways, amazingly, to find strength in numbers in person. When CIRP personnel learned that Delta, Northwest, and American flight crews were at the same hotel in Honolulu, for example, Capt. Tompkins reports, the volunteers pulled together a support session for the crews—in 3 hours. The CIRP pilots arranged for a meeting room, rounding up as many persons with expertise in CIRP assistance as they could. A handful of volunteers dr5ove to other area hotels where they knew flight crews were staying. The session, spread by word of mouth, drew more than 160 flight crew members. The hotel refused to accept payment for the room or refreshments, even providing a security guard to keep away reporters, Capt. Tompkins adds.

Flight Safety and Security

While these volunteers worked with the psychological aftermath of the attacks, and while the search for the terrorists’ targets to find the bodies of the victims continued, personnel in Washington focused their attention on the wounds within the flight security system. ALPA International’s officers, Engineering and Air Safety Department staff, and members of the ALPA-wide Security Committee worked around the clock to assess the security threat and confer with the FAA and Transport Canada to determine when flying would again be safe.

On Wednesday, September 12, the FAA announced limited reopening of U.S. airspace, allowing airplanes diverted during the height of the crisis to continue to their destinations or be repositioned. On Thursday, following more than 48 hours of nearly nonstop discussions among ALPA, the FAA, the Department of Transportation, and other agencies, and agreement on new security directives, the FAA announced it would reopen airports and resume flights “on a case-by-case basis,” as airports demonstrated they could comply with the new directives.

The same day, Transport Canada issued revised security requirements for air traffic in Canada.

Later, ALPA released a new Security Alert Bulletin concerning “Recommendations for Running Flight Operations” and established a Security Task Force (see “Pilot Report,” page 31).

In a statement released in conjunction with the security directives and advising pilots to return to work, Capt. Woerth said that pilots should “not hesitate to exercise captain’s authority to the fullest extent to ensure the safety of each and every flight.”

Capt. Woerth also pledged “to all pilots in the U.S. and Canada” that ALPA would “continue to work with government agencies and our carriers to make changes to further improve the [North American air transportation] system.”

Support and Solidarity

The week brought countless stories of support and solidarity, large and small.

ALPA representatives from carriers in Canada met U.S. crews whose flights had been diverted to Canadian airports.

Capt. Chuck Brown, human performance coordinator for the Air Canada regionals, noted that Halifax International Airport took in 44 widebody airplanes when the airspace system was shut down. Phone calls went out across the region to ensure that no crewed were stranded, with many of the Canadian pilots offering to open up their homes.

On the other coast, Capt. Terry McTeer, chairman of the AirBC MEC, notes that a total of 34 airliners were diverted to Vancouver International Airport, and other airplanes landed at smaller airports like Yellowknife and Whitehorse.

Representatives from AirBC, Canadian Regional, and Canada 3000 hurried to Vancouver Airport to open the MEC office so that any crews who had landed—pilots from Continental, Northwest, United, Cathay Pacific, and Korean, among others—could use the office.

By the evening of the 11th, Capt. McTeer says, with Canadian airplanes also grounded, a total of 110 airliners found safe harbor in Vancouver.

“We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow pilots,” Capt. McTeer says with simple dignity, citing the legend on the gate at the Peace Arch National Park, midway between White Rock, British Columbia, and Blaine, Washington. The gate, visible from the air, says, “Brethren Dwelling Together.”

The Work Continues

As this issue goes to press, ALPA pilots and staff are continuing to sort out the after of “the darkest day in aviation history.” The work on pilot assistance, and security procedures, continues apace.

The calls, food, and offers of assistance continue to pour into the United MEC office. Of the effort that rallied so many, Capt. Dubinsky says: “From top to bottom, the level of support from members and staff of this union—and from others outside it—is like nothing I have ever seen before.

An email message to ALPA’s offices from a pilot member reminded all that, whatever the livery or the uniform, no flight crew member anywhere could be unmoved by the events of September 11. It read, in part, “The aviation community is really very small.”