my 9/11 was a right f*ckin palava
my mum & dad were flying to toronto, canada on 11th september 2001 to stay with friends and have the holiday of a lifetime for a month, first time they'd had a proper holiday in about 10 years; they had an early flight from manchester airport so stayed at my place the night before and i drove them to the airport at 4.30am for their first ever long-haul flight. they were flying scandinavian airlines via copenhagen. dropped them off, drove home in a big hurry trying to get home whilst it was still dark so i could get some more kip.
got up and decided to work from home that morning and drove down to the office where i worked at the time. just as i was coming into the car park at 2pm-ish radio 1 did a newsflash about breaking news that 2 planes had crashed and hit the world trade centre. "f*ck" i thought, what a one-in-a-million accident, 2 planes crash into eachother and by some fluke land on the WTC
then i got into the office and everybody was piled into a little conference room which had a telly. bbc, sky, itv, every channel had tuned into footage of the WTC on fire. i'd never seen anything like it in my life. i couldn't believe what i was seeing when the pentagon got hit. i watched for an hour or so then thought f*ck where the hell are my mum & dad? i knew they'd be safe but with every flight over the usa, canada and the atlantic being rushed back to ground i had no idea. spent most of the afternoon trying to get info from scandinavian airlines who basically didn't know where the f*ck any of their planes were. all they knew was that any planes that were more than half way to usa/canada were allowed to continue, any less than half way had to return to europei ended up talking to my brother who was on holiday in barcelona at the time and he had the number of my parents' friends in toronto. managed to get hold of them and they had no idea what was going on either, they couldn't get any updates as canada's phone system had vuirtually crashed so didn't know whether to pick my parents up at the airport or what
for the next 24 hours i had no idea if my mum & dad were in canada or denmark or the UK, very very wierd. then i got a phonecall off them from goose bay, newfoundland saying they were at a nato base on bunk beds
goose bay is the first air base with a big runway in north east canada and virtually every transaltlantic flight from 9/11 had been forced to emergency-land there. at the start of their holiday-of-a-lifetime they were staying at a military base in the middle of nowhere with 100 plane-loads of bewildered passengers from all over the world, none of whom had the faintest idea when they would eventually get to their destination. they had another 24 hours there before their flight eventually got the all-clear to carry on to toronto...anyway they had a great time for a whole month in canada and i was looking forward to seeing them at manchester airport on their return. but their flight at toronto got delayed which meant they missed their connecting flight at copenhagen. by that time there were no more flights from copenhagen to manchester direct so they got put on a flight to heathrow and had to get another last flight from heathrow to manchester. the poor souls were absolutely f*ckin knackered when i finally picked them up, bear in mind they were both in their late 60's at the time
but get this, their luggage hadn't arrived
apparently it was lost at heathrow so they had to stay over at mine to wait for them to deliver it in the morning ffs!needless to say they haven't had a foreign holiday since and have sworn that if ever they do they'll make sure they fly direct next time
anyway that was my 9/11, where were you?
??? weird eh......Also seeing alot more on the towers and tower 7 which came down too.....its all very strange,
