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?

It was fine. As soon as we watched the second plane fly into the tower we knew there would be an impact. Had colleagues who were stranded in New Foundland for days.

I also remember answering the phone to someone whose husband was flying that day and she was desperately contacting what ever number she could get hold off. Our systems were shut down so I wouldn’t have been able to give her the info even if I’d wanted to.

Judging from the perfect perspective 25 years of hindsight gives you is unreasonable yeah

I wasn’t talking about the relevance to the country, merely the scale of said atrocities. You keep arguing that only Americans knew about 9/11 straight away though, it won’t make you right.

That's great, I'm not talking about the scale. I'm talking about how soon people heard in other countries and how news travelled before we had internet in our pockets. Off course news travelled faster in American because it happened in their country. The same carnt be said for other countries. I didn't receive a single text about 9/11 on the day, for 7/7 I was texting the receiving messages all day, because I live in england. Yes the scale of 9/11 might have been bigger but on the day of events no one knew that and it wasn't shared as much in the UK. You can only see that with the benefit of hindsight.

I lived in the US when Dunblane happened. First I heard about it was seeing it on the front page of the Boston Globe. People I was living with asked me if I knew anyone affected - I was from a town in the midlands!

People did know though.

Were school shootings already fairly common in the US in the 1990s? If it happened today I can see why it wouldn't be big news in the US, because it's not an uncommon event sadly. We're fairly local and it was an unprecedented event so the news about it was huge, and it is still remembered annually by many people I know.

Some people knew. If you where sat in front of a TV or had a radio in you know. We didn't get instant pings to our phone. Life was different then. Lots of people didn't know untill much later on the day or the next day

I think they were common in the US (will google) as I remember the family I was living with being shocked that I was shocked! No idea why it made the news out there though

When I heard about 9/11 in the Uk I was following it online, went home for lunch and watched it on BBC and all my friends were texting each other. The nursery where my son was also knew about it.

With 7/7 I was at the hospital with my baby dd watching it on the tv. DD’s consultant said he had been receiving messages from his family in India asking if he was ok. We were in the midlands.

This is not true at all. Millions watched the second plane hit the tower on live TV.

I was living in London for 7/7 and would normally have been on my way to work on the Piccadilly Line train that exploded (but my brother was visiting so I'd taken the morning off). One of my regular commuter-buddies (in the sense that we'd say hello daily as we usually got on the same train at the same station but had never had a conversation) was killed, though obviously I didn't know that till later. DH had gone in early and was at work in Covent Garden, and after his workplace shut, had to start walking home until he managed to pick up a taxi after several miles.

Everyone, despite being well aware of the deaths, was also trying to figure out how to get home without public transport. Smartphones were still rare and expensive, so no Google maps. People were going into newsagents and buying A-Zs, and women wearing impractical shoes were going into shoeshops and buying flat shoes they could walk in. That's what I remember most -- you noticed the sound of footsteps because there was so little traffic and so many people walking out of central London.

My point is that it's possible to be cognizant of a tragedy and still be concerned about how you are going to get home, whether that's getting on a plane to Chicago/Kuala Lumpur, or how to get from Charing Cross Road to Ponders End with no public transport.

That was me. I was in Illinois due to fly home 2 days later. Luckily we had family there that let us stay with them for extra days.

Eventually airports opened and we were told to go but expect a long wait while they sorted out planes for everyone. Think we waited about 12 hours which wasn’t too bad considering we were told could have been a couple of days waiting at airport.

I thought I would be too scared to get on a plane, but when it came to it I just wanted to get home so much I was ok. I couldn’t sleep the entire flight though (night flight), I was so anxious. I was amazed at the majority of people who could sleep on that flight.

When we got back my boss just waived the extra days we’d been away saying it couldn’t be helped. My mum’s boss insisted she took them out of her holiday allowance.

@ColdAsAWitches ,

‘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.’

As you have so admirably demonstrated by a combination of being sure and being wrong!

But, my memories of that day are crystal clear, and I don’t have a particularly good memory. But, working in the city, and two people whom I had been speaking to in the twin towers less than an hour before the first plane hit, who died, will ‘anchor’ your memory.

I think catching a flight home, though, would be a natural instinct. Anyone who flew away from home either didn’t know (which I find unlikely) or was pretty crazy.

I seem to remember that all major airports had streaming tickers of headline news and stock prices at that time, but I am less sure about that.

We were in Cyprus when this happened and due to fly back next day.
Our flights were delayed but not much and noone was causing a fuss.
My sister was in America in Florida and they had to stay an extra week before they could fly back. She said it was very scary.

Good question. I’ve no idea.

I probably only really tuned in to 7/7 as I knew my dad was due to travel to London that day. I was working when the news hit and it came on the news.

9/11 same - saw it on the news and registered quickly as I worked in the tourist industry.

Not everyone watched TV /listened to the radio all the time though. I lived in a house where we rarely watched TV or radio. We got our news from newspapers so it was quite possible to not know about a big even till the next morning

DH lived in a house with the TV on all the time and I can understand that in a household like that people would have known as soon as they got home from work but it's strange to assume everyone lived (or even lives) like that

I was driving for 6 hours yesterday and listened to an audiobook the whole way. A major global news event could have happened and I wouldn't have had a clue

In the US there are so many internal flights people use them almost like buses, suddenly not being able to fly or having to go through security checks was a culture shock.

I wasn’t assuming everyone was watching Tv.

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.

(I don't know if this has already had a response but this isn't true - in the UK anyway.)

I was off work and heard about the first plane on the radio - initially it was thought to be a small plane - an accident.

My sister rang as she'd heard about it too and we both put our TVs on and watched "together". We saw the second plane hit live, people jumping from the towers - nothing was being edited at that point - and the chaos and then the towers falling live.

It shows how fragile memories actually are as we get further from the events.

Indeed 🙂

Nowadays mumsnetters would be competing to see if they could be the first to post a threadabout it within minutes of it happening

There were certainly security checks going airside in the US pre 9/11, even AFAIK on domestics.

Problem was as was demonstrated it was lax as hell, so you are probably right that it came as a shock when it all got tightened up and radical measures were enforced such as people without boarding cards not being allowed airside....🤔

I’ve just watched the Airline episode - and even just after 9/11 happened (within a day) and easyJet airport staff were suspicious of someone they still admitted they hadn’t checked their ID properly 🤦🏽‍♀️

Back then TV and radio was the only way they would have found out, unless you got a text but that was rare with the phones we had. I didn't get a single text about 9/11. It's not like it is today

What the hell kind of argument is “the rest of the world isn’t America”? Okay, great, nobody ever suggested that it was, but 9/11 is unarguably the single biggest international breaking-news events in modern history. People across Europe were watching it unfold live on television that day, not discovering it over breakfast on September 12 because apparently the Atlantic had swallowed every television signal, radio broadcast, newspaper office and internet connection. My husband is Irish and he somehow managed to learn about 9/11 while it was actually happening as did plenty of people in the UK as this very thread proves. Your personal experience of not hearing about it immediately is not evidence that an entire country didn’t know anything.

And this is genuinely hilarious coming from someone who is lecturing Americans for supposedly knowing nothing outside their own borders. I literally never said anyone outside America experienced 9/11 the same way Americans did … obviously they didn’t, but your bizarre claim that people generally didn’t even know it happened until the next day is complete and utter BS. Also, dragging 7/7 into it makes your argument worse. Of course 7/7 was especially significant to the UK but yes, Americans also heard about it the day it happened because major international news does in fact exist. You started out by accusing Americans of being insular and knowing nothing beyond their own country and then somehow ended up arguing that something outside Britain apparently wasn’t major news because you personally weren’t paying attention to it. You’ve confused “I didn’t know” with “nobody knew,” while demonstrating the exact insularity you were trying to mock Americans for. Your lack of self-awareness is honestly fucking embarrassing so maybe sit this one out, yea??