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 was watching Neighbours and after it finished, it switched to live footage. I can remember seeing the second crash and the beautiful blue sky, a real contrast to what was happening. At the time, I didn’t comprehend the full impact of what I saw, plus the first crash and the other planes.

YANBU, there were multiple flights under attack and it was obviously entirely possible that European flights would have been targeted simultaneously so it’s shocking they weren’t worried for their own safety.

2 particular memories from that time:

A couple of hours after it happend dh’s old aunt rang to complain bitterly that Countdown wasn’t on!

I said, ‘But haven’t you heard about the terrible thing that’s happened in New York?’
‘I don’t care! I want Countdown!’
(Absolutely typical of her, I might add,)

The other thing, just a few days later we were scheduled to fly to Boston for a memorial event for my BiL, who’d died at only 53.

It didn’t occur to us not to go, but at around the same time I read that Clint Eastwood had cancelled a planned trip to London for a film premiere. Too scared!
That was the end with a vengeance of the ‘Thing’ I’d had about ‘tough guy’ Clint Eastwood since I was about 12, when he was Rowdy Yates in Rawhide.

We were on honeymoon in the Maldives at the time, and flew back a few days after 9/11 into Gatwick. I just remember armed police everywhere. And lots and lots of checks and delays. It was surreal.

"realistically they’d all seen screens of the news"

how on earth do you know this? they wouldn't have been able to stream it on their phones!

Off topic but my absolute favourite line from airline 😂
Airline Departure Confusion: A Cabin Crew Perspective | TikTok

Yes, I agree @ColdAsAWitches is mistaken. I definitely saw the second plane go into the twin towers live on TV. I was standing outside a curry's in our local shopping centre watching footage of the aftermath of the first hit on the display TVs in the window when it happened. However, if I hadn't happened to be passing a display of TVs I probably wouldn't have heard about it until later, let alone seen the footage. I think people forget how in 2001 we weren't able to constantly access the internet on our phones to get updates so news spread more slowly. Even people working in offices wouldn't always have access to an internet-connected computer in the way they do now.

I was very into the latest tech in my twenties and I had a Nokia 3330 in 2001 which was top of the range and had a very rudimentary web browser that was barely functional - you definitely couldn't watch video on it. The first phone I had which it was actually practical to keep up to date with the news on would have been a Blackberry Pearl or a iPhone both around 2007. I'm not even sure it was possible to stream video on the original iPhone either.

To me, It was a terrorist attack/plane crash , which was an unfathomable tragedy obviously, but it caused the world to change in ways we still can't properly explain to younguns almost 25 years later.

Not just boarding flights but starting jobs, opening bank accounts, renting/buying a house, so many more things I can't remember, doing easily prior to this event.
You only have to watch films prior to 9/11 and they just seem unrealistic now.

I was completely oblivious 🫣.

I'm American and was in sixth grade when it happened. I live in Chicago, so an hour behind New York and the second plane hit when were waiting in the halls for class to start. By homeroom, every teacher in the school already knew what was happening, and that's when all the students found out so yea, the whole 'we didn't know anything til the next day' BS some people are claiming on here is both wildly and embarrassingly inaccurate.

Your experience isn't going to be universal though is it. In America I can imagine phone calls spread rapidly about the news. That wasnt happening in the sleepy village in England where I worked in a shop

Um, you experience isn’t universal either, babe. I fully believe you were in a sleepy little English village and didn’t hear about it straight away Okay, fine. But “I personally didn’t see the footage until the next day” and “nobody saw footage of the second plane until the next day” are two completely different statements. One is your experience. The other is just factually wrong.

In the U.S., people were watching live news coverage, offices and schools had TVs on, phones were ringing and the second plane was seen in real time by millions so yes, your village shop may have been several hours behind on the chaos but that doesn’t somehow rewrite what was being broadcast everywhere else. “My experience wasn’t the same” is a valid point. “Therefore nobody saw it” is not.

The footage of the first plane was from Jules Naudet who was out with firefighters.

The Naudet brothers' film of 9/11 is well worth a watch, it is a case of right place, right time for film making.

They were filming a documentary following a probationary fire fighter.

So you get footage like the first plane hitting, but also footage of the empty fire station while everyone is out working.

The rest of the world is not America. In other countries we didn't hear about it because we don't live in America. Did you hear about 7/7 in the same way? I doubt it.

Well I heard about 7/7 pretty quickly.

I lived in a village in Tenerife!

So of news travelled there ……

Another American thinking the whole world revolves around America 🙄 it doesn't. Pre internet on every devise people in other countries didn't know what was happening in there own country never mind America, most of the time I didn't have my mobile with to even see texts, not that I got any on 9/11. The only way you would find out was if you where watching the news or had a radio on. Clue, America is not the centre of most people's lives.

Comparing 7/7 to 9/11 is absurd.

Im not in America, I was in a small village in Scotland and I watched the second plan hit live - in quite sure the TV channels interrupted normal broadcasts and went live as soon as they could.

But would an American? Most Americans have no clue what's happening outside the American bubble.

No it's not, 7/7 was a much more important news story to many people in the UK, far more so than 9/11. Besides people in the UK who weren't watching a TV didn't know about 9/11 till much later because we didn't have constant internet, I didn't receive one text about it. 7/7 was a completely different story

I was a child during 9/11 but remember it vividly and had to fly during the aftermath.

I was at a party recently and talking to a couple who seemed “a bit younger” than me. 9/11 was mentored and I said that I had watched it on TV and they were incredulous and I assumed they were disbelieving it was shown on tv, but no they were incredulous I was so old to have been alive in 2001…🤦‍♀️

No really, it’s a wild comparison to make. Genuinely.

@ColdAsAWitches ,

I posted above of my experience and it is your memory that is defective. The first plane hitting was immediately covered but a lot of people thought it was a light aircraft accident. The second plane crashing into the towers was on live TV, as was the towers collapse.

9/11 really wasn’t the dark ages. There was certainly internet and phones, albeit not smart phones.

From AI, which agrees with my memory;

‘The first plane (American Airlines Flight 11) hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM. Most news networks were not broadcasting it live initially—they switched to coverage after the impact.

The second plane (United Airlines Flight 175) hit the South Tower at 9:03 AM, and this collision was captured live on many news broadcasts. Millions of people watched it happen in real time as networks were already covering the first crash.’

I remember watching it with my colleagues in total disbelief. To be fair, the first plane crash wasn’t covered live, and nor was the Pentagon one, but it was all happening on streaming news in real time.

‘No it's not, 7/7 was a much more important news story to many people in the UK, far more so than 9/11. Besides people in the UK who weren't watching a TV didn't know about 9/11 till much later because we didn't have constant internet, I didn't receive one text about it. 7/7 was a completely different story’

Despite being evacuated from my city office and listening to the controlled detonations around me on 7/7, it was a tiny story compared to 9/11.

9/11 spurred a trillion dollar war and changed air travel for decades, as well as having a major impact on financial markets. 7/7 was pretty much a one day event, apart from everyone being on high alert and the unfortunate shooting of the poor Brazilian on the underground.

No it's not. 9/11 was important to Americans which is why they all shared the news story as soon as they heard. It wasn't the same in the UK because we don't live in America. For 7/7 it was shared immediately by text etc because that story was very relevent in the UK because it affected us. Like I said America is not the centre of everything for the majority who live in other parts of the world.

This is the same as my recollection. With an event like that all channels in the UK would have switched to rolling news as soon as the first plane hit, so if you had access to a television you could follow along live. The delay would be for people who weren't in front of a tv or listening to a radio for whatever reason and unless someone reached out to tell them the news they may not have heard for a couple of hours. I'd be surprised if many people hadn't heard about what had happened by 6pm British Time.

It's a bit like when the shootings in Dunblane happened in 1996. I was in school that day and we started to hear rumours that something bad had happened in Scottish school at lunchtime but it was all very imprecise about what had happened and where. I sat through Chemistry after lunch where the teacher refused to say anything and told us to stop talking about it, then I had English and the teacher let us watch the news on one of the departmental televisions. That's when I learned it had been Dunblane Primary (where my little cousin was at school) and that there were multiple fatalities. That would have been about 2pm, when the shootings had started at about 9.30am.