9/11 NYPD Helicopter Video Released

[GoldenRivet]

I remember i was working toward my Commercial Pilot's Certificate Multi Engine add-on.

I had flown through the weekend and had a practice check ride the day before and was off the schedule on 9/11. I had decided to take the opportunity to sleep in that morning.

My sister, assuming i would be interested in any sort of airplane related news called me and told me she heard that a plane crashed in new york into a building to put the TV on and see what happened.

I spent most of that entire day in front of the television.

I was enraged

I was enraged because i knew innocent people had died needlessly

I was enraged because my nation had been violently attacked

I was enraged because i anticipated the problems this would create in my career field.

One of my friends had been hired the month before at American Eagle Airlines in Ft. Worth... the phone rang in the simulator during his check ride, they shut the sim down and canceled the check ride immediately.

he was jobless the next day.

It occurs to me that there is a generation of kids now nearing their 10th birthday and our nation has been at one degree of war or another their entire life so far.

This is a very different America - and a very different world - we live in due to that one day.

It makes me sick just to think of those attacks, let alone see video or hear audio of them.

I've been through the American Airlines HQ and training center, spent a lot of time there, spoke to the pilots that knew those crews, sat in the same briefing rooms as they have, walked through the same halls, dined in the same cafeteria, seen the memorials, worn the uniform and done the job... I have friends and family in the middle east right now as a direct result of 9/11, and we've buried one cousin who was KIA in Afghanistan, one cannot help but feel a special closeness to it all from that vantage point.

but i guess we all lost something - and have a lot invested on that infamous day.