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

Really? Because I was a student working part time as a receptionist that day with a 24/7 news channel constantly on the TV in the waiting room. My memory is that there was a newsflash when the second tower was hit. They showed the footage of the second tower being hit. People falling out of towers, the towers collapsing, the people running out of the pentagon.

I was sure all of that was live.

It is possible. It was 2024. He need not have been born in 2002, he could have been born in 2001 - any date after 11th sept! So time for degree, PGCE, get a NQT job.

I was abroad when it happened and only knew about it because someone showed me a newspaper article the following day. It all seed quite far removed. I flew back a few days after it happened and it didn't occur to me my flights might be affected. There was a minutes silence at the airport but otherwise it was business as usual.

A problem in America is not necessarily a global issue ( and in this case it turned out it wasn't). If France or Germany was suddenly attacked in such a way, it's very unlikely flights would be grounded in America. The whole world doesn't rotate around America.

Footage of the towers falling, yes. Of planes hitting them, no that took a while. And proves my second point about fallible memories! We've all seen the footage so often we've lost the memory of when we first saw particular details.

Yabu. Some people just are on a one track mind. Imagine saving for a year for your holiday and then finding it cancelled or shortened. Even if there has been a tragedy in America it might hard to understand why would that mean you can’t fly to Spain from the UK. Or worse flying for a very ill relative.
Not the staff’s fault and if they were aggressive should have been banned. That bit is still an issue and airlines need to support staff more

It can’t have been that long after it happened because I saw it on the tv at school. It was about 2.45/3pm here so 9.45/10am in New York.
When I got home from school the towers were falling and it was all over the channels.

but if you were abroad you did have less information. I was in Greece during 9/11 and flew home a few days later. We didn't have mobiles or laptops in our apartment, and no radio or tv, so we didn't really know what was happening and it took me a few hours to find out - when I went to the village for dinner that evening. The local bar had constant tv footage (which was much more gruesome than the UK footage I remember). So if you were trying to fly home from a holiday or a trip it was more difficult to know whhat was going on. And it was stressful trying to get home so I'm sure people were getting angry in airports.

They had a documentary on the tv about this a couple of weeks ago. It was quite interesting to watch how they prevented it.

And then of course there was the attempted shoe bomber so then they started scanning shoes which they did in the US for years. It was only on my last couple of trips we didn’t have to all take them off. They would just maybe pick some people.

In think it was known immediately .

I knew as soon as a second plane was mentioned when they interrupted the chatty radio program I listened to at work.

Then we all clustered in the departmental office for news as the secretary had an online computer. Nothing else was done that afternoon.

The radio had gone to constant news rather than normal programming .

When I got home at 5.30pm my lodger was sitting on the floor glued to the TV. I joined her and there we stayed for the rest of the night.
When we heard about the Pentagon and the other flight that came down we actually thought a war was starting.

There were bomb scares in my city centre.
It certainly wasn't 48 hours before we realised it was serious.

I suspect history teacher was lying. If he wasn't born, then at the earliest he was born in 2002 and is only 24 now. If this was a few years ago, he would have to have been a teenager when you had the conversation.

TBH it was a strange time and I think it took people a while to understand exactly what had happened. Of course people shouldn't be shouting and abusing airline staff but as has been said people were scared and confused and unfortunately it was the staff that took the brunt of it.

You've seen the footage so often that you've forgotten that that's not how it happened at the time - there was little immediate footage. It was hours before there was a shot if the first plane hitting the tower. It was the next day before there was film of the second plane. People weren't getting live updates in their phones. It was much more chaotic. People can be forgiven for not understanding the seriousness of what had occured.

There's a fascinating study in the US where they ask the same survivors of 9/11 of their memories of the day, every year. There are now huge differences between what they 'remember' now and what they initially saw. They have obviously seen the footage and now remember things they never saw, things are out of order, they saw things happen in places they had never been. It shows how fragile memories actually are as we get further from the events.

What is the difference? It was on tv. It was on the radio. It was constant news. People going about their business would have seen it and heard it.

You never forget where you were when you first heard the news. I was in my classroom after school marking books. The cleaner came in and said the Head and a couple of others were watching some 'terrible accident' about America on a screen in his office but she didn't know what it was. I said ...interesting I'll put the TV on when I get home then continued with my marking
Drove home, put TV on and couldn't believe my eyes. They were showing again and again these two passengers planes driven into the towers and coming out the other end. Horrific!!
As awful as the whole thing was I think in those days I was too naive to understand the horrific world wide significance of the attack
Someone older and wiser than me remarked at school the next day ...attacking the US this way ...they've pulled the tail of a sleeping tiger and the world will never be the same again.
I've often thought of what she said in the years afterwards
Going back to op's original comment ... Personally I would have been terrified to take a flight anywhere that day or for a considerable time afterwards. It must have been terrifying if you were away from home and had no choice about getting a flight back when airports opened again.

Exactly the same in my experience about 5 hours after it happened.

But people going about their business, working, shopping, travelling on a train werent glued to their smartphones reading all about it, were they?

Nonsense. I was listening to it in the radio.

Instant news to your phone wasnt such a thing back then. Nobody knew what was happening at the time

Some people behave strangely, confrontationally, unhelpfully when stressed and afraid.

Same, we had one customer make a comment when they came into the shop that we couldn't understand. Something about it probably being a weird time to buy cheese. But we had a classical music cd playing as the background music and no Access to internet radio or TV so none of us thought anything much of it till we all got home

It’s how casually the man giving the voiceover drops the bomb that they’re cousins, almost like an afterthought! 😂

People didn't have mobile phones then. I was at work in a shop and had no idea what was happening till I got home. I had a couple of odd conversations on the train and I had no idea what the people were referring to.

And if you are stranded somewhere and can't get home it can be immensely stressful whatever the cause. You may need to get back for caring responsibilities,.or because you will run out of medication. You may be worried about not getting paid if you don't show up at work. Or you may have saved long and hard for a badly needed holiday. I can feel horror at what happened and compassion for the people stranded by it

@gillefc82 yes!!! That episode is wild 🤣unforgettable🙈

YABU, sorry.

At the time it was totally unbelievable. My mum say watching it, breastfeeding my brother and with me playing around her, thinking they’d mistakenly started playing a new action film she’d not seen yet. My dad, on the other hand, started to immediately prep for a world war and attack on the UK. Nobody knew what was going on. Everyone was scared, and when you’re scared you take out your frustrations on other people over the most insignificant of things.