The Tragedy of America on September 11th, 2001

An Article about Safety. The Crash and the Symphony. An Article about Safety.

By Barry R. Willis   ALPA Council 5 Safety Chairman

Honolulu. September 11. 2001

It was such a beautiful flight over the Pacific in the middle of the night on the way home to Honolulu from Narita, Japan, on United’s flight 826. Captain Chuck Arthur and his two first officers, myself and Len Packett, had just received a silent message from Dispatch saying that there was some terrorist activity somewhere and that we should restrict our cockpit to all but the head purser.

That was simple. We could do that. Captain Arthur then began his scheduled two-hour break with the confidence that we could protect the door as ordered.

F/O Packett and I reviewed the Security chapter of our Flight Operations Manual. The part on hijacking. Good review for what could affect us if things got out of hand. But it turns out that what was to occur was not included in our Manual. We’d have to “wing” it.

The company frequency was alive with chatter. Most of it was in Japanese. Occasionally we heard the names “United” and “Delta” mentioned. Packett recalls thinking that he should have requested them to speak English so we could all share their messages.

Soon a voice in American English announced that he was being required by his company to return to Narita. We didn’t catch the name of his airline nor did we realize that something big was about to unfold. We did some quick figuring which indicated that we didn’t have enough fuel to return to our point of departure. We could stop at Midway Island, but that didn’t seem necessary at this point. No need. Yet.

Another message arrived after an hour or so. Dispatcher Sandy Reedy emphasized that NO ONE was to be allowed into the cockpit due the confirmation of terrorist activity in New York City. There was really no word to us what happened.

That was to be our last message from Dispatch. We were on our own to gather information of the unfolding events as they occurred.

We tuned into the powerful KHVH radio station out of Honolulu and continued monitoring the Company frequency to get a better idea of what was happening. As the picture became clear, we couldn’t believe it: The New York City Trade Center had been destroyed, as well as a portion of the Pentagon. What is this? A motion picture? No word from Dispatch about what had happened yet. We didn’t know yet if a United Airlines plane had been involved, but we did hear on the radio that an American Airlines flight was involved.

It was time to wake up Captain Arthur from his break.

This is the purpose of this article—an article about safety. For it is after Captain began his second shift, and Packett began his break, that things started to happen. It was a beautiful thing to watch: a well-trained and experienced Captain for United Airlines conducting the activities for his ohana—his family of pilots and flight attendants on board the Boeing 747-400 that night of tragedy. He solicited our contributions and opinions of nearly every activity and all of us involved had the impression that he not only listened to us, he actually used our inputs toward decisions which often were better than the sum of its inputs: We call this “synergy.” All decision-makers should strive toward synergy; United’s pilot training can help achieve this goal.

It was a time for patience, planning, selflessness and the execution of the result of United’s training. Captain Arthur exhibited it all. This is not an article about Captain Arthur, really, but it does reflect how United’s pilot and flight attendant training is really quite effective and up to the task of enhancing a Captain’s skills beyond what he or she may envision he/she may have. If a pilot has been paying attention, if flight attendant have been paying attention to the training, if Customer Service Representatives have paid attention to what United has taught us, then we may be able to exhibit skills far beyond the ordinary. All we have to do is do our job and be open to a little creative thinking. That means paying attention to our manuals and taking our training seriously. Captain Arthur sure did. And it showed.

But this situation was different than our training. We are trained to generally comply with terrorists and to not resist our attackers. That would be in an attempt to preserve your own life and the other lives in the airplane. We are not, however, trained to react to what happened to us. Nor to react to the scenario that the hijackers were planning to use the plane as a destructive tool: a lethal weapon full of fuel and astonishing potential for incredible damage.

Our responses to this unfolding situation caused us to rely on some of our training, but mostly our common sense. And in this process, we were forced to compartmentalize our thinking in order to think clearly.

Captain Arthur’s creative process and problem-solving capability was generally uninhibited by not having to fly the airplane. He turned that responsibility—say compartment—over to me. I tried to concentrate on this because we had some severe weather up ahead. And he gave Packett his specific orders and expected them to carried out. And Chief Purser Deedee did her job exceedingly well, too.

After a rather sparse briefing by our dispatchers (which I didn’t hear), but after listening to what his first officers had to tell him about what we had learned of the situation, Captain Arthur briefed the Chief Purser. She then left the cockpit to solicit, clandestinely, passengers who appeared to be military. She found one and moved him to the top deck close to a good defense position for the cockpit door should any attack become evident. It became apparent that Captain Arthur was analyzing every possibility and that he was planning for the worse. He kept on asking Len and me if he was acting with overkill. We supported him completely and we learned what the difference between precaution and excessive caution is. His actions led us toward the recognition that the situation might be more serious than we thought. Certainly it was more serious than Dispatch had communicated to us.

Captain also solicited the assistance of a former U.S. Army First Sergeant (Delbert, who now is a well-qualified flight attendant) to remain in our cockpit to further defend our barrier should it be broken. He was shown where the crash axe was located. Other male flight attendants (Aaron and Wayne) were also deemed as large enough to help defend our position in the cockpit and they were pressed into action.

AIRINC called. Airinc is the outfit the airlines use to voice communicate throughout the world with their planes. We were notified that all United States airports were closed except to aircraft which declare an emergency. That was one of our easiest decisions; we declared an emergency.

Was this a movie we were in? It was seeming unreal! It was not, and Captain Arthur kept on fertilizing the creative-thought processes and continued coming up with ways to solicit input from all us underlings. The synergy was rampant. We could almost see the gears turn in Arthur’s mind. Continued input led to continued creative ideas on how to handle this ever-changing situation.

Packett’s law enforcement training would become invaluable to set up a critical defense of the cockpit door should that become necessary. Get the idea? Use a person’s skills to its maximum. While the Captain and I were busy in the cockpit, Packett set up a physical defense for the cockpit door. There were suitcases used as barriers, empty wine bottles used as bludgeoning weapons, and the bad-ass attitude that if anyone should come up those stairs to the upper deck, they should treated as the enemy. He briefed the upstairs flight attendants that if anyone were to come up those stairs to the upper deck, they were to defend the cockpit “at all costs”! Packet’s words to those under his command can be paraphrased thusly: “If a person comes up those stairs, it may be with the intent to kill the pilots. You are not to simply stop them, you are to take any action necessary to keep them from getting to the cockpit door.”

To further isolate the cockpit from a potential hijacker, Captain Arthur asked that the Chief Purser DeeDee remove as many of the upper deck passengers as possible to seats away from the cockpit door. Packett and Deedee worked this “compartment,” too. She used her Japanese speaking skills to help facilitate the moving of passengers away from the area of the cockpit door. If necessary, they’d explain to the passenger that we had to move people to other seats because of the airplane’s weight and balance restrictions. None of the flight’s passengers objected. They never suspected; they didn’t expect a thing.

All the while, we debated how much information we should give to our passengers. If the passengers were to suspect that we were defending our position by publicly announcing our intentions, we feared that it might trigger one of two possible scenarios: First, if we had a terrorist on board, he might attack. Second, an announcement of that sort might trigger panic or irrational actions. We wanted neither.

It was decided to not tell the passengers anything until after landing. The last thing we needed was an emotional problem from an irrational passenger. It was agreed that Delbert would make the announcement after landing while the Captain and first officer manipulated the airplane toward the gate.

That was another excellent, synergistic decision.

Another decision we discussed was how much our Purser should tell the other flight attendants. We all kicked this idea around for a while and decided they should not know anything other than inform them of a heightened sense of hijacking and/or terrorism. They were simply told that some terrorists had done something somewhere and that they should review this area of their manuals if they had time. This worked out well. The entire crew later agreed that keeping any distractive thoughts from interfering with the work at hand–and not telling the passengers or even the other flight attendants of our situation–kept any panic or over-reacting from occurring.

After landing Captain Arthur asked Deedee to hold the flight attendants from leaving the airplane until he had a chance to de-brief them. The meeting was an explanation that we chose to keep them “in the dark” because things were unfolding so rapidly and, frankly, he wanted to avoid irrational responses to this situation. He apologized to them for not telling them more but they understood completely and were grateful that he handled the situation the way he did. Deedee then admitted that she was “in the loop” but was just too darn busy to tell everyone. That would have been an unnecessary use of her time. There was just too much to do and it would just be best if the non-critical flight attendants didn’t know. At the Captain’s meeting, they understood completely and were confident that Arthur handled the situation correctly.

After all was over and we were safe and sound on the ground, we had a chance to ask what could be done better. We  wondered now if that flimsy cockpit door was really adequate for the job. And it seemed to me that security of this type would be better handled at the Airport Security level, long before they board an airplane. If that were done properly, perhaps the flimsy cockpit door would be adequate. Another thing: When Dispatch instructed us to disconnect the airphone system, I wonder if the phones should have been left available to our passengers… That way they could report to the rest of the world what’s happening to them on the airplane.

One last thought. Why did I mention a symphony? It’s because of the way Captain Arthur handled the situation. He handled the other crew members as members of an orchestra, each person playing his/her part. While we read from the music, he orchestrated the entire ensemble toward efficient accomplishment of the symphony. It was a beautiful thing. All of our Captains should be equally skilled.