AIBU to judge passengers complaining about grounded flights on 9/11?

I was in the UK giving a training course to a company who were American owned and whose HQ was in New York. There were text messages coming I. And phone calls and we abandoned the training.

Same here..I had the day off work, sat down with coffee and turned on the tv, which happened to be on a news channel, which I hadn’t realised at the time and thought I was watching a film! It was just in time to see the second tower being hit!

I worked at a big theme park at the time and we got a lot of really unhinged phones calls when we were closed (like everywhere else at the time).

Looking back I think some people really externalized their need for normality. It was a really crazy time and like the first lockdown no one went anywhere for a few months.

I also saw this live on TV. The idea that it was deliberate was quite frankly preposterous.

They weren’t smart phones and not everybody had one.

Having travelled extensively, yabu.
Travel was completely different in the past.
For example there weren’t any weight restrictions on checked in bags. If you could carry your suitcase then you could take it.
Smoking was allowed on planes, they had a smoking and a non smoking section but you all sat on the same plane.
The crew would stock the full range of perfumes and you could test as many as you liked whilst travelling.
You could pull up right outside the airport and get dropped off, no charge either.

Also the UK was not as influenced by the USA or any other country as it is now. To see a woman with her face covered was unheard of where I grew up. I had never heard of Bin Laden until 9/11.

Times change.

Jeez and FFS. Some people never miss an opportunity to be racist assholes.

@Nomorepants well done on making the decision to immediately refund travel. People must have been relieved by your kindness. How did that play out further up the chain of command? Hopefully you weren’t reprimanded for it.

Nothing like 911 had ever happened before, in fact it was inconceivable that it happened at all. We weren’t so globally aware as we are nowadays, and information wasn’t available. If you were travelling from your hotel to airport, you may not have had access to tv screens and so were unaware what was happening or the magnitude of it.

I've only recently listened to the ATC audio of all flights it's all been out together lasting hours from botson control,new York, Washington etc it was utter mayhem and total confusion that day even after flight 11 hit the WTC the management in ATC where being told it flew on and was heading to Washington,there was initially so much confusion that day staff at Heathrow Gatwick etc would have been told so many different things and relaying it to customers.

Nobody at that time could have even imagined the sheer destruction and devastation that happened.

They did have mobile phones back then.
I brought my first mobile phone in 1996/7 as I was working away from home and wanted to keep in touch with my parents and my parents with me, as my grandparents were elderly…
It was either a Motorola or a Nokia can’t remember which.

I was sitting in the tarmac waiting to fly to America for a year when it happened. Long delays then eventually they told us American airspace was closed, so i knew it must have been something bad. The terminal was chaos but what shocking news, couldn't get my head round it although we only really got snippets of information. I had a week to wait in London before I flew. My memory of it is reasonably good but to be honest I don't recall any complaints, just stress and worry. Perhaps it was too fresh at that point? Or maybe I've just forgotten those bits.

I would never behave like the people you’ve described, nor do think most people would (and didn’t). However, your view is 20/20 hindsight at its finest.

How exactly had these people in airports see screens of the attacks OP?

Your right that live streaming to.mobiles was (probably).still in the future but CNN and the other rolling news networks started carrying live coverage as soon as they realised the gravity of the situation and that was seen on screens in public places around the world.

I saw some of the events in a bar in the Far East where it was very late evening, might have even been AM.

Given the audience was mainly airline crews on slips (layovers) not much was said.

Agree with this. I’m not an airline employee, but have traveled enough to see how irrational people can be. These situations speak volumes about a persons character. People can be vile, and walk amongst us all unfortunately….

We didn’t see it til about 2am local Spanish time (so hours after it had happened) because one bar had the news playing on a TV pulled up to the front. News didn’t spread or get seen as quickly as it does now.

They did.

I was living and working in Tenerife and that’s why we had a sudden influx of arrivals to accommodate.

We also had loads of passengers flying home over he next week as normal to the UK who were obviously nervous.

How exactly had these people in airports see screens of the attacks OP? It was years before smartphones and they were in an airport.

I was at work in the centre of a big UK city and didn’t see any footage of 9/11 until I got home at the end of the day. I knew it had happened from friends and family of staff calling the shop landline, and then local evening paper which had a few paragraphs about it.

Just watched it and now watching some more episodes.

I forgot how difficult people could be (and ridiculous) and the number of times I heard “you could do something you’re just choosing not to” which means “you aren’t getting us on the flight we missed and that’s all we want!”

Also forgot about lovely Leo from when i use to watch it!

I was on holiday in Spain when it happened and travelled home a couple of days later.

Our flight was delayed (they all were) because they were checking every plane for potential terrorist tampering and we accepted this - I’d prefer to be a bit late to be honest! However, there was a fairly insensitive couple in front of us checking in who tried to take BB guns on the plane with them! Couple of days after a terrorist attack! Imagine very strong Brummie accents But they’re presents for the kids! when they were told they couldn’t take them on the plane and they would be confiscated.
Some people only think about the impact on themselves, sadly.

I think it’s a dose of reality for people who don’t work with the public.
A good illustration of how entitled and abusive a fair portion of the consumer culture informed public can be.

Having worked in the NHS especially during COVID and its aftermath when the work pressures, number of daily contacts and public expectations and stress zoomed up as well as a rapidly ageing population worse off after austerity (not to mention a communal fear of succumbing to a new and unknown pathogen!) I’ve experienced those behaviours firsthand.

Made me imagine if I could go back in time I would just resign and not put myself and my family in harms way for horrible people.

Tories like Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock had the public riled up even more to deride and confront NHS staff to the point of abuse so some of blame does lie with the culture that politicians create as evidenced by KB this week.

Now living overseas where it’s more the culture that most everyone contributes to civility and plays a part and less a saviour mentality.

So you are judging people for something they did 25 years ago? The Roman's are going to love you

Not everyone was watching it or if they were, understood the scale. I was in the university library that day preparing for my Masters programme.

The BBC news website went down due to the heavy volume of users trying to get online. I knew a plane had crashed into a tower but really very little more til I got home that night.

FWIW even the flightcrew over the Atlantic westbound at the time had a very incomplete picture for the first few hours, and many had to rely on voice of America/BBC World service to get a clue.

Aircraft were being diverted to Canadian airports or turned back to Europe on the Atlantic tracks and often the Oceanic controllers simply didn't have time for explanations.

"Route present position direct Gander and I don't have time to argue or say why" was apparently one comment from a controller to an aircraft.

The ATC people worked miracles that day.

I was listening to it on the radio, while my baby was asleep...
Except I thought it was a very badly written R4 play. No information was really being said, just a panicked person saying odd things in a breathless voice like "no one knows what's happening." "everyone is trying to move but it's slow".

Dd woke, I went up to get her and was a bit of time getting her up and I came down some time later to find the programme hadn't changed.
At that point I became suspicious, and went to put the ( dial up) Internet on to see the news and took several attempts to connect, and then couldn't load any Web pages.

I suspected something had happened, but I couldn't tell what. I certainly didn't get any idea off R4, had no TV, and my mobile phone was a Nokia brick - could you even get smart phones in 2001?

But even when dh came home and said what had happened, and how their whole company had crowded into the tiny kitchen to watch the only TV they had, I didn't realise the scale for some time.

I think not seeing the footage made it difficult to understand the scale of the attack, but also, live, I got very little information. Even once I'd worked out the R4 was something happening, not a play, all I could tell was a plane had gone down ( I'm not even sure I could tell it was America) and people were panicking nearby.
It certainly didn't sound like a world event.

Sorry, yes I typed them the wrong way round. The second plane was seen live, it took a day for footage of the first plane to be shown.