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

[doosesmarket]

I’m watching an old Airline UK episode and it’s from 9/11. The way people were behaving at not being able to get on their flights blows my mind. I keep trying to think well they hadn’t processed 9/11 the way we have now, but realistically they’d all seen screens of the news and watched 2 planes smash into the towers and the towers collapse full of people.

Surely you’d have enough understanding of the need to ground flights and change security measures even then?

I know it was 25 years ago but AIBU to hope those people demanding/shouting at the staff/the entitlement that they need to get to Benidorm that day because ‘we’re not in America’ were ashamed when they seen themselves on the telly and how they acted during the most horrific terrorist attack any of us have ever lived during?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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….

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.

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.