As a pilot in the Air Force, Phil Jach survived a sneak attack from an enemy gunman waiting to ambush him at the end of a runway in North Vietnam.
When he later opted for a career in commercial flying with United Airlines, he thought his days of enemy threats in the skies were over.
But all that changed on the calm, clear morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as he neared the end of a seemingly uneventful trans-Atlantic flight from London to Chicago.
“United, you better start looking for a place to land,” a U.S. air traffic controller announced unexpectedly as the plane crossed briefly into U.S. air space above Maine.
The next thing he knew, a Canadian air traffic controller told him he needed to find a place to land in that country because U.S. airspace was closed.
He immediately knew something was terribly wrong.
In decades of flying, Jach, 69, of Hudson, had never heard of U.S. airspace being abruptly shut to traffic.
By that time, passengers were getting word from friends and family on the ground about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. A dispatcher for the airline provided few details, telling him only, “There’s been a terrorist attack in New York.”
Jach was directed to fly the Boeing 777 to Toronto, where he safely landed by a cargo ramp before numerous other flights arrived. He and his crew of two other pilots and 13 flight attendants got rooms in a downtown hotel and waited to hear when they could come home.
Two days later, the United Airlines crew desk contacted him and asked whether he could quickly get his crew together.
“You’re coming home.”
Early that afternoon, they arrived at the airport and prepared for the flight to Chicago. But before loading, an airport security officer told him one passenger met the profile from the U.S. government as a possible threat. The man was Arabic, started his flight in North Africa and had a one-way ticket from London to the United States.
Jach doesn’t know for sure whether the passenger who was denied a seat on the flight to Chicago was indeed a terrorist. But a month later, he read a newspaper article that mentioned a man whose trip originated in Algeria and included London was detained in Canada after 9/11 and sent back to London.
When Jach and the crew returned to Chicago from Toronto that night, they were the first plane since Sept. 11 to fly into O’Hare. Most others still were grounded as U.S. airspace remained restricted.
The usually bustling airport was a ghost town, with no lights other than on the landing runway. The usual fuel trucks, baggage carts and people were nowhere to be seen.
To celebrate America’s return to flight after the attacks, United Airlines trucks fanned out in a “V” on each side of the approach gate. Employees stood on the trucks or beside them waving small American flags.
“It was an incredible sight,” Jach recalled.
For the few months he flew after 9/11 before a planned retirement at the end of 2001, things were different, Jach said.
“It surely did change after 9/11,” he said.
Security was much tighter, and possible threats were taken even more seriously.
In October of that year, Jach recalled, a male passenger on a flight that was getting ready to take off from Seattle to Denver saying, “I’m going to die and everybody else is going to die in this plane.”
The man was immediately apprehended and the plane returned to the gate, where it was thoroughly checked for four hours.
No bombs or other threats were found. But with the events of 9/11 still fresh in everyone’s minds, many passengers and a couple of flight attendants were too unnerved to get back on the plane.
Disaster in nation’s capital
Linda Emore couldn’t be more thankful her colleague was running late the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Emore was waiting with several others from Akron Children’s Hospital for their co-worker to get back to their hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital. Their plan was to spend some free time sightseeing at the Pentagon before meeting with senators and representatives from Ohio that afternoon.
As the director of advocacy and government relations for Children’s, Emore, 62, of Stow, makes numerous trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers on behalf of the hospital.
But that day, her scheduled meetings never took place.
Emore was in the lobby just before 9 a.m. when she heard people talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center in New York.
Everyone agreed it must have been an accident — until another plane smashed into the second tower minutes later.
And then at 9:47 a.m., the terrorist attack on America hit uncomfortably close for Emore when a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon.
The sounds of blaring police, ambulance and firetruck sirens immediately filled the air. The usually bustling streets of D.C. were eerily void of people.
“All you heard were sirens,” Emore recalled. “People weren’t on the streets. Businesses weren’t open. It was like everything shut down.”
Tensions grew when rumors spread through the J.W. Marriott hotel that another hijacked plane was heading toward Washington and the nearby White House could be the next target.
Experts speculate that Flight 93 could have been destined for the nation’s capital before it crashed in Shanksville, Pa.
“It was an eye opener, that this could happen to you, too,” Emore said.
Emore rushed to the hotel’s business center to send an email to the hospital saying: “We’re OK. Please call our families.”
Emore, two co-workers and a member of the hospital’s women’s board feared they were trapped in Washington indefinitely. All flights were canceled and rental cars were quickly taken.
Emore ended up getting a ride home that afternoon from another administrator from the former Tod Children’s Hospital in Youngstown, who also was in Washington for business.
Since then, Emore said, she’s noticed much tighter security in Washington.
Areas of the Senate that used to be open are now closed to the public. Security personnel are often seen walking around the capital with mirrors, looking underneath cars for bombs. And most federal buildings in Washington have more guards and restrictions than before the 9/11 attacks.
“Now when you go back, every place you go, you’re reminded of it because of the enhanced security,” she said. “You just don’t have the freedom you used to have there.
“It’s unfortunate. It’s restrictive, but you can still do what you need to do.”
Air travel changed forever
Not on his watch, said Roger Carano, a retired Akron firefighter.
“No one will take over a plane I am on without a fight,” he said.
The weapon terrorists used on 9/11 — fully loaded commercial planes driven into buildings — forever changed the way Americans feel about plane travel.
For Carano, it means always making sure he has an aisle seat, and taking mental note of everyone around him.
“Yes, I do profile the passengers and people around me. Not only flying, but in everyday life. I’m not being paranoid, just being aware of my surroundings,” Carano said.
Carano said he is also motivated by the knowledge that 343 firefighters died when those planes brought down the Twin Towers. He joined some 1,000 firefighters who rode motorcycles to Ground Zero a few days after the attack. When he returned home, he got his first and only tattoo: “Never Forget.”
The story of Flight 93 also continues to inspire 10 years after it crashed into a Pennsylvania field as passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists.
“Flight 93 changed all of us,” said Lynn Richards, who was a car rental agent at Akron-Canton Airport the day of the attacks.
“We no longer are the victims of our fate. We were shaken out of our complacency. If we see wrongdoing, we fight, be it politics and the tea party or bringing down a plane to save a national monument. We get out of our seats and take action ... We will be victims no more.”
Sharon French of Tallmadge has flown nearly a dozen times since 9/11, and never without thinking of Flight 93.
“Never again will I board a plane [without thinking] what would the people do if something would happen on this flight? Would they fight back?” she said.
Many people avoid flying altogether, and those who do fly face security measures that have only grown stricter as the years have passed. Recent polls suggest Americans think the pendulum has swung too far with the advent of full-body scans and more aggressive pat-downs.
Arlene Miller, a retired Tallmadge teacher, noted even those who don’t fly can’t avoid strict security measures evident at popular attractions she’s visited in the last decade, like Walt Disney World.
“Do I mind? No, because I feel that we will be safe on our visits and on our journeys,” Miller said.
“Do I mind? Yes, because my grandchildren and their peers will never know about life before scanners and metal detectors.”
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.