The author, John Marek, is a writer and executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
Last Friday, many people took to social media describing where they were that fateful morning 19 years ago. Most Americans alive that day recall, with great clarity, what they were doing when they first heard about the drama playing out in the skies over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Fewer, I imagine, recall in as much detail the days and weeks after, the way September, October and November of that year played out in ways similar to the bad-news-upon-bad-news situation we find ourselves in here in 2020.
In the aftermath of 9/11, air travel ground to a complete halt for several days. Initially, it was unclear just how long it would be before the airlines resumed regular flights. Some pundits suggested it could be weeks or even months before air travel returned. This was a matter of real concern to me, since my job as a consultant with R.S. Byrnes Associates was highly dependent on flying. My typical week started with a 7:15 Monday morning staff meeting, a round of phone calls and perhaps an hour or two of paperwork before catching an afternoon flight to one of a dozen cities where my clients were located. Then, after working onsite Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I would catch a flight back to Charlotte Friday morning. Only two or three of my clients were within reasonable driving distance. Just in case, I looked up bus and train schedules to the cities I visited most frequently: Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville and New Orleans.
Unlike COVID-19, 9/11 did not cause most businesses to shut down. Still, there was discussion in the days immediately after about how the event would impact business travel, long-term. Would companies begin conducting meetings through the nascent online technology of the day? The simple truth was that the existing infrastructure and tools were not up to the task. In 2001, the majority of internet users, even many businesses, were still on dial-up service, and a camera in a phone or a laptop was more a fanciful novelty than a communications tool.
After a couple of days in Byrnes’ south Charlotte office, where I had rarely been for more than a day or two at a time, I decided to hit the road and make “courtesy calls” on the handful of clients I could drive to. I headed down to JBL in Spartanburg for an afternoon, and on the way home, coming up I-85, I saw a beautiful sight, a US Airways 737 coming in for a landing. It was being ferried back to the hub from wherever it had been stranded. The airlines were reshuffling their assets in anticipation of resuming service!
Despite the dire predictions, limited air travel resumed within a few days and regular flight schedules were back within a week. I had previously made plans to fly to Cleveland on Sept. 19 to attend a Cleveland Indians game with one of my clients who had box seats at (then) Jacobs Field. Since the trip was already planned and paid for, I went ahead with what was a very memorable night at the ballpark. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when they played a tribute to New York first responders before the game.
The next week I was scheduled to visit a client in Gulfport, Miss. The best way to get to Gulfport from Charlotte had always been flying Delta through Atlanta, but right before 9/11, US Airways debuted a direct flight to Mobile, Ala., which was just a short drive from Gulfport. It was the only flight I would experience post-9/11 that featured completely over-the-top security measures. In Mobile, we stood in a long line to be sniffed by a dog, and I was “randomly” selected for a pat-down that was, uhm … exceedingly thorough, while a uniformed National Guardsman stood watch, rifle at the ready.
As we sat waiting to board, a man of apparent Middle Eastern descent walked in carrying only a shopping bag. When we boarded the plane, a 45-passenger Embraer jet, I noted that his seat was in the first row. Several other passengers also noticed this and, although no words were ever spoken, glances were exchanged and heads nodded. If that poor man had so much as sneezed during the flight, there’s a good chance he would have found himself face-down in the aisle with a half-dozen business-casual men on top of him. I say that not because I’m proud of it – I’m disgusted – but as an illustration of just how on-edge everyone was.
A week later, with air travel still a hassle, I drove to Bristol, Va., to visit another client, Electrolux. The sane way to get from Charlotte to Bristol is north on I-77 then west on U.S. 19. It’s about a three-hour trip. Since I had a little extra time on my hands, I decided to take the scenic route, up 321 through Boone. Ostensibly, it was only a half-hour longer, but it was a significantly more challenging drive through the mountains. There were a couple of switchbacks where I swear I drove 10 miles and would up 30 feet from where I started. On the way back, I stopped in Boone for lunch and heard a weird news report about an employee at the National Enquirer who had contracted the exceedingly rare disease anthrax. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but within a few days a whole new scare would grip the country as numerous media outlets and government facilities received letters laced with spores of the deadly disease.
Although fewer than 20 people contracted anthrax and just five died, the fear of bio-terror on the heels of the 9/11 attacks made the fall and early-winter of 2001 a scary time to be out-and about. I was “quarantined” for several hours in the Detroit airport when a “suspicious substance,” which was later determined to be Splenda, was found on a table in my concourse.
By early November, after no additional tainted mail had been found for a month and there had been no new hijack attempts, there was a sense that the worst of the crisis was over; then an inexperienced pilot made an unconscionable mistake and threw the world back into terror mode. On the morning of Nov. 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 took off from JFK airport on Long Island and crashed a few minutes later into a suburban neighborhood, killing everyone onboard and five people on the ground. Given the location and the timing, it was immediately assumed to be another terrorist attack. At the time of the incident, I was in my office getting ready to leave for the airport to take an afternoon flight when my boss poked his head in and said, “Looks like you’re not going anywhere for awhile.” Hundreds of flights were canceled, prominent buildings and landmarks were closed and major airports were put on lockdown. Analysis of the flight data, however, almost immediately ruled out terrorism. The first officer had responded to a patch of wake turbulence with overly aggressive rudder movements that ultimately tore the vertical stabilizer loose, dooming the plane.
A case could be made that things never truly returned to “normal” after the fall of 2001, as evidenced by shoeless fliers waiting to be X-rayed prior to boarding their plane and the fact that we continue fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think that may also be true of the pandemic. Nineteen years from now, I imagine we’ll still be talking about the ways COVID-19 permanently changed the ways we live and work.