Transcript
Thinking about getting health insurance or switching? With Irish Life Health, you'll get 1 month free on our my plan range. Search Irish Life Health, a better life with Irish Life Health. Irish Life Health deck is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. 1 month free is equivalent to 8.33% discount over 12 months on new policy starting January 1st to February 28, 2025. Wow. It is 9:11 again. It kind of creeps up quietly because we don't really think of it. It's so long ago now, like 22 years. We don't think of it as having as much impact, but of course, there's a lot of posts and I don't want to add to the normal social media stuff, but this is a a unique take we have on it right here. I spoke with the guy who was the air traffic controller, who was basically in charge of New York's airspace for the jets that were coming for the World Trade Center. He had to make sure, like, there was one store well, you'll you'll hear his story, but it's, like, incredible. There was one plane that was in it was a a civilian airliner that was in the way of 1 of the jets, and there was issues there. And also there there was a lot of debate that they were they gonna shoot down these jets? Like and it was also interesting the military response. And you'll see how Chris Tucker, who's the air traffic controller, you'll see how he communicated with the military. He he they basically had to inform the military that there was this hostage situation happening. And it was really incredible to get that viewpoint. And I'll just quickly mention my own story. I was on the 1st floor of the World Trade Center there was a Dean and DeLuca which was like kind of where I would have breakfast every day. I was day trading back then, this was obviously 2,001. My business partner, Dan Kelly, you might remember him from the Wall Street Insane series we did. Dan, Ohman, and I did a whole series about basically all the truly screwed up and messed up stories and things we had seen when trading and running a hedge fund and all the Wall Street stuff, and it was insane. But this was when I had first started day trading, and Dan and I would go out to breakfast every morning and discuss what our strategies would be. We usually went to the 1st floor of the World Trade Center and we were walking back after eating at the World Trade Center. We were walking back and Dan turned to me and said, is the president in town today? And I'm like, no, why? Or I don't know. And he said, well, that plane looks pretty low. And it was, like, basically, just about 5 or 600 feet higher than us. It went, whoosh, right over us, and then everybody on the street sort of ducked, like, instinctively as we saw You could even see like the American Airlines logo, that's how low the plane was, and then it went boom. We saw the huge boom right into the World Trade Center. And at first, I mean there's no there's no real video of this, but at first you could sort of see part of the plane sticking out of the World Trade Center as it kinda melted into the building, and I was in complete denial. Dan instantly said, we're being attacked. And I'm like, no, no, no. It's okay. It's too early for anybody to like, I was in this weird sort of denial. Like I said, it was too early. The plane was remote controlled and there was no one in the World Trade Center this early, even though it was like almost 9 AM. But Dan instantly knew what was happening. I didn't believe even after the second explode plane hit, we didn't see that plane, we just saw the explosion because it came in from the other side. Dan was like, see everybody started screaming and Dan was like, see we're we're being intact. And I'm like, no, no, that was just an explosion from the other one. It kind of rippled through to the next building. And he's like, no, no. And I didn't really believe it until the Pentagon then got hit. But of course, you know, I lived about 3 or 4 blocks from the World Trade Center, so we instantly ran upstairs and all sorts of things happened. I won't go into my story too much other than to say that, grateful that, you know, nothing physical happened to me or my family. And of course, it was sad to watch the events unfold in real time and actually there and see the people, you know, throwing themselves in the building and then the black smoke that surrounded the whole area, including where we were. And, in any case, much more interesting is Chris Tucker's fascinating story about what it was like to be the air traffic controller that had to handle the entire mess. He basically retired after that. But again, I will let him tell his story. Here he is, Chris Tucker. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Ready? Yep. Okay. I'm gonna start now. I am so excited to have this next guest. And I know I always say I'm so excited, but this one is, like, almost personal for me. First off, I'll just describe him. So Chris Tucker, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me, James. Okay. Reason Chris is on is I heard him speak a few weeks ago at an event, and it was riveting. There was not a sound in the room. Basically, I'm gonna I'm gonna over describe what you did, and you could correct me when you talk. But, just to make it simple, basically, Chris was the air traffic controller on duty in New York City on 911. One of many. One of many. One of many. I shouldn't have said the. That's why I said you would that's why I said I was gonna over to describe them. One of many. But you were trying to deal with very specific situations involving 2 of the planes coming out of Boston, and you had to deal with extremely complicated ethical issues that someone shouldn't really have to come across in a in a lifetime, not to mention being an eyewitness at the very beginnings of of one of the darkest tragedies in American history. And, you know, my own I just wanna mention my own personal experience was that morning, 9 o'clock. I was a day trader at that time. My own personal experience that morning was, first, one of euphoria because the stock market had been going down for several days in a row, and I was loading up every day. And, finally, it looked like the market was gonna open up huge. The weather, as I'm sure you've heard a 1000000 times over, it was probably one of the most beautiful weather days in New York City history. Absolutely. I had I was living just 2 or 3 blocks away from the World Trade Center. My business partner and I had just had breakfast at the Dean and DeLuca at the bottom of the World Trade Center. We were walking up Church Street, and he points up at the sky. And he's like, is the is the president coming into town? Because it looked like this huge jet was just right over us, which it was. And so he thought maybe it was Air Force 1, some special thing. And then within seconds, this jet whizzed right over our heads. Everybody in the street ducked even though it was 600 feet higher. It was still so loud and so fast. You have never seen anything like that, never. And we literally watched you know, everybody saw it later on TV, but we watched the plane go right into the building. And it was weird because for a few seconds at least, the building looked kind of jagged, and, like, kind of the tail was you could almost see part of the tail, and it was just I don't know if it was melting or about to go on fire. It just it you didn't that image, I never saw on TV, the image of the seconds right afterwards. And, and then later, of course, we saw we didn't see the second plane, but we saw the explosions from from our side. We were on the other side of the the street of yeah. We were on the side that the first plane came in on. And, you know, it never occurred to me until later that, you know, and and and I and I never really write about this, talk about this, or anything because a lot of people, 1,000 and 1,000 people had a much worse day than me. But just in isolation, it never occurred to me until later that not that many people have watched a plane, like, a big jet plane crash, let alone 911. So Right. You know, because I was trying to figure out. I did and it's almost cliche to say this, but I had many nightmares until about 2,005, 2,006. And it was almost like a classic case. Like, first, it was once every other day, then once every week, then once every month, then finally, like, once 2005, maybe twice, then one one more, and that was it. And it would be either like a plane or like a tidal wave just engulfing all of New York because there was the whole black cloud thing afterwards too. But that's my story. Your story is is so so intense. I would just love well, actually, before I ask you about 911 Sure. Why'd you become an air traffic controller? That's a great question. So as we were just talking, I told you I went to the University of Oklahoma. I I grew up on Long Island. I'm sorry. I was born in Long Island. I grew up in, just just about 40 miles north of New York City in what is now Cortlandt Manor. Oh, okay. And when I was 12, my dad worked for American Airlines, so they moved us to Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I lived in Oklahoma for 12 years, went to high school there. Was that their hub? No. But that's where they moved, certain portions of their headquarters from New York. He was with, human resources, so that's where they put him. Did he just hate that he had to move from New York City to Tulsa, Oklahoma? Absolutely. In the beginning, but it turned out to be a lovely place. You know? New York is New York is very New York centric. You know? This is very, very much the center of the universe for a lot of people. And if you live in New York, nothing else really counts. You know? In in Oklahoma, flyover country in the middle of the country, it sounds like, pastors, and that's it. But that's not the case. I I loved my time in Oklahoma, and I met some really tremendous people out there. I I keep wondering, like, if I, like, sometime you're right. New York City is too stressful to live in. Like, I I love living in New York City, but I don't like that aspect. There's there's there's there's many cons to living in New York City. There's many cons living in New York City. And I always wonder if I lived in a place like Oklahoma for some reason, Kansas is always the state that comes to mind. But if I live in a place like Oklahoma, I wonder if just, oh, this is just great. I'm gonna read every day. I'm gonna write. I'm gonna take big walks. I'm just gonna go to sleep early. I'm not gonna worry. The cost of living is gonna be so much cheaper. Like, you know, but here, you feel like, oh, no. I gotta be number 1 at something to succeed in New York. Yeah. Things definitely move at a much different pace out there. Yeah. It it it's definitely more relaxing. So so so your dad obviously had an influence on you with his air airplane experience? Right. And he was a pilot, and he got me interested in flying as a kid. And when I turned 22, I got my pilot's license after I I left school not knowing what I wanted to do. Went on a jaunt out to California, decided that I wanted to sail across the Pacific, flew to Hawaii with a friend, found a sailboat that was coming back, sailed back to Berkeley, which was a tremendous experience all by its end. The nice thing about being on the ocean in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around you is that you can find some clarity that for some bizarre reason is not attainable when you're in the normal world. So it's like Oklahoma cubed. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And so I decided that, you know, while I was sailing, I decided I I know what I knew what I figured out what I wanted. I wanted to learn how to fly. That's all I knew. I thought flying was the most awesome thing in the world, and I wanted to learn how to do it. So when I came back, I got a job. I worked. I saved my money, and I got my pilot's license. How how long, just these are random questions, but how long does it take to get a pilot's license? Anywhere between if you really push, you can probably do it in under 2 or 3 months. For, like, a jet? But no. No. No. Just just your private pilot's license. For a jet, you probably have to go to, like, Embry Riddle or a large or flight safety, one of these schools that you get a degree while you're doing it. Okay. And it takes probably 4 years. Is that for all jets or just, like, airliner jets? No. That'll get you into it depends. It just depends. I mean What if I wanna do a a citation? If you wanna be a corporate pilot and learn how to fly citations, then they can they can, customize a a curriculum for you to to get you certified in in the aircraft that you wanted to. But you wanted to you you you were going for an airliner? No. No. I was just wanting to get my private pilot's license. I didn't know that I wanted to fly for a living or not. I just knew that I wanted to fly. Mhmm. So I got my private and, had a gas doing it. But what, like, what did you do with it? I just just for fun. In the in the end, after I became an air traffic controller and I had made some money, I ended up buying a share in an airplane out here on Long Island. And, What plane? What kind of plane? It was a Blanca Super Viking. That's not gonna mean anything to you, but it's a, it was a hand built aircraft. They're hand built in Minnesota. They have a steel tubular frame with a fabric skin on them and a wooden wing, which is spruce and mahogany. It's and they're very, very strong. The wing is very strong. They're famous for cutting trees down when they crash. Good to know. Is it a jet, propeller? No. It was a single engine high performance prop. Uh-huh. So how fast can it go? This is about like a bonanza. 140, 150 miles an hour. Okay. Why don't you use that to go to work every day? Because you you work like 5 hours. Married, had kids, bought a house, had to sell the airplanes. Oh, okay. And when you were flying, and you've probably been flying for many years, you're how old are you now? 54. So 54. You you you've been flying for 30 years. Do you ever have a situation where, oh, no, I might be in trouble? Yes. Absolutely. Is is it worth it getting a pilot's license knowing that you're gonna have that at least once in your life, that feeling of like, oh my god, I might die? Yeah. I mean, I think so. I think so. Absolutely. You know, I jumped out of airplanes with parachutes on it. I like those kinds of high stress activities. But, flying is is, in general, very safe. But that having been said, getting in an airplane, airplanes can find ways to kill you that you can't even dream of. You know? So it's, Like, what was your scary moment? So the scary moment I had was, a very a situation that was very similar to JFK Junior. You know, what killed JFK Junior. He he died, because of an inadvertent entry into what is referred in the field as a graveyard spiral, where and the reason was is because it was nighttime, he had very little nighttime flying experience, and he did not have a visible horizon. The visible horizon is how VFR pilots maintain their spatial orientation. What's VFR? VFR is visual flight rules. So you're not allowed to when you have a VFR pilot's license, you're only allowed to fly when ceilings are at a certain minimum, and visibility is a certain minimum, like 3 miles and a 1000 feet, I think. It's So he shouldn't have gotten on the plane that night? Well, no. It was night it was just nighttime. And the point was is that he was flying to an island, and when he pointed the aircraft south toward the ocean, for all you know, he so now you lose all the lights on the surface. So for all intents and purposes, you're completely IFR, and you have to rely on your instruments because the horizon's not visible for you to keep the wings level. So what happens is is if the aircraft, gets into a very gentle turn and begins descending gently at the same time, it feels exactly the same as level flight. Because normally, when the aircraft descends, you can feel the bottom fall out from beneath you a little bit. But if you turn, you increase the g forces on your seat also so they compensate for one another. So the aircraft can get into a very gentle turn and start descending, and you won't even be aware of it unless you're looking at the instruments. And via your cloud your body is your brain as far as it knows, is completely level. Yes. And your brain also there are lots of reasons why, pilots lose spatial orientation. Many things come into play, but the body lies to you. And and VFR pilots are not trained to look at the instruments and trust them. IFR pilots, instrument rated pilots, are trained to look at the instruments and believe what they see. VFR pilots tend to not believe them because they're not trained to use them in the same way IFR pilots are. So what happened to me was, I found myself in a situation where I was looking at a chart to make sure that I was below a certain altitude because of I didn't wanna penetrate some New York TRACON airspace above me, because I needed permission, and I didn't have it yet. And the reason I didn't have it is because the radar controller that was talking to me couldn't identify me on the radar because my transponder wasn't working very well. So I was recycling the transponder, looking at the chart to see where I could turn to be, you know, out of this air to, you know, keep myself out of this airspace. And next thing I I looked up, and my altimeter was spinning, which is not a good thing. That means you're going down fast? I was going down very fast, and I didn't even know it. My body didn't you know, I just something told me to look up. I looked up, and it was nighttime, and I I saw the I had the landing lights of the aircraft on still, which are relatively bright. And, I saw the reflection of the lights on the water south of the you know, in the Atlantic Ocean, just south of the of Fire Island, and, it terrified me. You know, when I was able to pull out of the dive, and I, you know, and I got out of the dive, I was, relatively safe altitude, probably 11 or 1200 feet, but I I nearly peed my pants in the process. You know? And I just I got so shaken, I turned around and flew back to the airport and landed. Got out of the plane. Would you have done if you felt like you couldn't would you have jumped? But it's hard probably hard to jump when you're spinning. There's no time. Yeah. No. And I wasn't spinning. The the aircraft was in level flight, basically, but it began descending on me because I didn't have it trimmed properly. And so is there any way you could have, like, landed in the trees or landed in Well, no. I would have put it in the water. That was my only option really at that time. Maybe the maybe the beach, but that would have required a big turn. And what what do you think your odds of survival were if you landed in the water? Minimal. Wow. Minimal. So Ditching in the water is a risky business. So so Unless you're solely in the Yeah. Muds and river here. So so, so okay. Why did you when did you become an air traffic controller? So, I was visiting some friends in Oklahoma after I got back from Hawaii. I was down in Norman visiting friends at at OU, and a buddy of mine came bursting to a party that I hadn't seen in 4 years. And he said, Tucker, I got just the job for you. And he he was a a a wild, heavy drinking redneck, one of my favorite people. I really like the guy. But he got a job as a job. People of all. Yeah. He got a job. Not agree with him on everything, but they're gonna be fun. If he says I have a great job for you, you at least wanna listen if it's a joke or whatever. Exactly. And it turned out that he was right. He said he said this is a job you really should apply for at the he got a job as a controller. I think I wanna say Wichita Falls, Texas, but honestly, I can't remember. He said, all you gotta do is take a civil service examination and have some work experience behind you, either a combination of 4 years of full time experience and or schooling, and then you could take this exam. So I went and took the test, and I did a I got a really good grade on the test. And then, 6 or 7 months later, they called me and said, come down to the the academy. The academy happens to be in Oklahoma City. Oh, wow. So that's why that's how he knew about it probably too because he probably got his training there. I don't know, honestly. But but I got the job, and then, you know, they they tell you to choose a region of the country that you wanna work in. And at the time, there were 9 regions, and I wanted to some of my goals in life that I discovered while I was in the boat in the middle of the Pacific were that I wanted to go to Europe frequently because I loved it, and I wanted to travel. And so I thought New York was probably the best place for me to be if if I wanted to go to Europe or And you had a probably a support system here, a family? No. At that time, they were all in Oklahoma, so it was a it was a jump for me. Mhmm. But, I ended up getting a job at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, which is a large building out on Long Island. It sits on the entrance to the airport at Long Island, McArthur Airport. What what what year was this? 19 October of 88, I went to the academy, and it's only a 3 month thing. The academy doesn't teach you how to become an air traffic controller. It's a screen to screen out, undesirable candidates. How do they do that? You pretend to be an air traffic controller, and you'd you have to run all these, problems and and take a lot of tests. There's a lot of stuff to memorize. Lots of rules. Lots and lots of rules. And, it's a very stressful environment. I think 40% of my class passed. Really? And it's do you think they failed prime so I'm imagining there's 2 ways to fail. 1 is if you don't memorize all the rules correctly, so you make a mistake, or if in the simulations, you just emotionally can't control yourself. In the vast majority of this, it's not an emotional thing. It's just a you have to have a a knack for it. A lot of it is an ability to do math in your head. Simple math, but but math is just the same. Well, I imagine in a high stakes situation, I I'm gonna use all the wrong words, so forgive me. If you have 2 planes in the same air lane and one's going it's like one of those math problems from the STDs. One's going 400 miles an hour. The one behind it's going 500 miles an hour. You have to figure out when the behind one's gonna crash into the front one. Exactly. And you have to protect the and you learn how to protect the airspace around an aircraft so that the other aircraft doesn't penetrate that airspace. So you'd how and and this is, something I I didn't know until you started, alluding to it in the talk I saw you give. But how close can 2, big jets be to each other without before they start to affect each other? Typically, if you're above 23,000 feet, the rule is 5 miles lateral and a 1000 feet vertical. Because at that point, there's so little air that the the air that I'm No. Manipulating is gonna affect your air? No. It has to do with the fact that that those altitudes, they're traveling. Once they get above 10,000 feet, jets move really fast, so things happen quickly. So you need a large buffer. Mhmm. So jets typically all airplanes above 23,000 feet, and the continental United States up to 29,000 feet, 5 miles apart, a 1000 feet of vertical separation. Above 29, you need 2,000 feet of vertical. And at what point, if they're close enough, do they actually start to change each other's course because there's some undertow or whatever? You mean you mean does the does the wake behind one aircraft affect the flight of another aircraft? Yeah. Yes. It does. It can. In fact, I've seen 2 situations where, one was a g five behind a Boeing 777, and another one was another private jet behind a Boeing 777. I can't remember what type it was. One of them was a g five for sure. And the g five experienced a 50 degree uncommanded roll, and he was 20 miles behind the other jet. 20 miles? 20 miles. Wow. Very rare. It's extremely rare. When wake turbulence remains wake turbulence tends to spread away, you know, from the tips of the wings, it spreads to the left and the right of the path behind the aircraft, and it tends to sink very slowly, to a level 2 or 3000 feet below where it was originated. And, but this was a situation where the aircraft had a the wind was from his right quarter panel, so that kept the wake directly behind the triple 7. The right the right wing wake stayed directly behind the aircraft, and the left wing wake spread out farther, further away. And, and you can't see it. It's an invisible thing. It's clear air turbulence, basically, but, it can be very dangerous. And there was a situation with a Challenger, I think, a 1000 feet below an Airbus 380 passing in opposite directions, and the Challenger was, I think, encountered so much turbulence that the aircraft went into an uncommanded role and subsequently a dive from which they had to recover, and they damaged the aircraft permanently and had to make had to make an emergency landing. Wow. So, but that's those are extremely rare situations, and they there's lots and lots of research that goes on about how much space we need to have between our planes to keep them safe. So you go through the 3 months training. You're not filtered out. You're in the 40% that that make it. You go you moved to New York, and now you're kinda like apprenticing. Exactly. You become a trainee. It took me three and a half years to become fully certified where I was allowed to sit by myself without somebody plugged in with me and talk to airplanes alone. And so very first day was terrifying. Really? Because, yeah, because then all the lives of all these people are literally at your fingertips. It's interesting. You know, in in the very beginning, when you first learn how to do it, it is the job is stressful for that reason, because you're responsible for other people's safety. Once you become relatively competent, because it takes a while to become competent on your own, really, it takes a solid 3 years before you can become a really decent controller, because there's just so many experiences you have to see and things situations you have to see and learn from. It's a complicated business, but after you become relatively competent, you know, people walk up to you on the street and they say, oh, you're an air traffic controller, and the first thing out of their mouth is that's that's a very stressful job. And to a certain extent, that's true. The job can be stressful, but not because we're responsible for other people's lives. The the stress comes from the fact that when you get busy, you have a large number of decisions to make, and they they stack up in, like, a queue in your brain. And your brain can only hold 5 or 6 of them and keep them straight. If you have 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 things that have to be done, that produces a tremendous amount of stress. Right. So so that's what's what's the size of the of the problem here? Like, are you dealing with like, at any given point in the met metropolitan area, how many planes are in the air, both public and private? So I've heard this statistics, I I cannot, account for its veracity, But I've heard that if you were to take, a point that's kind of equidistant from Newark Airport to LaGuardia to Kennedy. Right? You take that point, you draw a a circle 10 miles in radius, so 20 mile 20 mile diameter circle around that point. Right? In that column of airspace, at any given time, there can be 300 aircraft. 300. And and and And very few of them are in level flight. They're all climbing, descending, changing altitudes, turning. And they're going 100 of miles of out. Yeah. And some of them are passing over. Correct. Right? So so there's all sorts of things happening. And then do so so and, again, I'm sorry for the naive questions, but I'm hoping it sets the setting for the 911 story. A lot of these planes have their routes planned in advance. That's great. There are highways in the sky just like there are on the surface for cars. Aircraft fly mostly on highways in the sky. So So like Boston to New York, those planes take off every half hour, but they're flying on that same highway. And and as long as you see them keeping that spacing, you don't have to think the decisions are relatively easy, I imagine, on that specific route. If you're if you're talking about a single route of flight that's that's heavily populated, yes. And so if you're talking about a single airway, then you get busy using speed control. American 6 46, say air speed, 300 knots. Roger maintained 300 knots or greater. Delta 656, say your air speed. 310. Roger reduced speed to 300 knots or less. Less. Because you're because you're seeing them on the radar or whatever. Mhmm. And is it is it radar? It is radar. Yeah. So so you're seeing them on the radar, and you see that they're okay. They're at a good distance. They're both traveling, the same speed, so they're not gonna hit each other. This one's gonna start to descend, but that's okay because this one's still far enough away, and boom, you can make a decision and wherever. You're descending, you have a Right. You you go into the the routine in your brain. Okay. This plane is descending. Everything else is normal. Now go to 2 50 miles an hour. Go down a 1,000, whatever. Do private jets, do they and or small planes, do they get in the way because they're not as regulated? It's not because well, yes and no. So you have small planes that can be IFR, so they have to be under my control. And small planes don't mix well with jets, typically. You know? So if you have a single engine or a twin engine prop on the same airway at an altitude that a jet wants, it poses a problem. You have to get the jet either around him or down below him or above him. That's a drag. Like, one person flying on a plane, and you gotta tell some jet going to London, like, oh, move 5,000 feet higher and Right. Increase your speed. And Yeah. And and it's it's fascinating. Right? It becomes an interesting problem. So that's that's one thing. That's then you can have VFR aircraft that don't have to fly on the airway, so they can go wherever they want to, and they're required to maintain, visual separation from other aircraft. Right? If they get into busy airspace, it's incumbent upon them, I think, personally. This is my take on it, for their own safety to talk to an air traffic controller. Right? Because the air traffic controller has the big picture. We can see what's going on. We know where the threats are long before they do. Well and and when they pick up the phone or whatever it is, and they say, you know, hey. Is there an air traffic control out there? Who are they talking to? Like, how does that get routed to the So it depends. And they can look on a chart to to find out what frequencies are best to pick up. Right? So if you're within a certain distance of New York City and you're on the southeast side, you'll look at the chart, oh, 120.02, and I'll talk to New York approach. And what happens is is you you call you call, a radar controller, either whether he's in a center or an approach control, and you say, New York, this is Cessna 405. I'm 10 Mile Southeast of the Jones Beach Monument, northbound at 6,500 feet looking for advisories. Okay. And the controller either red or identifies the aircraft. You know, he'll he'll tell him to squawk a certain beacon code. Squawk means to, you know, he he dials in a 4 digit number, the aircraft broadcasts that number, and the radar can see it. And, so now I know, oh, that's him. Right? So I can put a make some keyword entries and attach the flight plan for that guy to that beacon code. So now the radar knows who he is, and it puts a full data block on the screen, and I can see who this guy is. And and has have you ever had one of these small planes where suddenly the pilot is, like, so scared of flying? Like, maybe it's raining and lightning, and he's not used to this, and you've had to kinda, like, say, okay. Calm down. Here's what you do. We're gonna we're gonna help you through this. Not personally encountered that, but it happens on a regular basis where VFR pilots encounter IFR weather, and it's a killer. It kills people throughout the year. Yeah. Yes. It's a very dangerous situation for the you know, mostly for the reason we talked about before, spatial disorientation. It always seems like such a cool thing. Oh, get a pilot's license. I am never going to get one. I don't need it. I don't I I whatever. But, I mean, if you become confident in your own abilities Zero chance of that happening. You know? So okay. I've never been terrified in a plane. That one time, that was the only time I really scared myself. There were other times when I had I was involved in a near mid air collision while I was talking to an air traffic controller at Republic Airport. And I was in the pattern at Republic Airport, and another aircraft entered the pattern. And he said he was approaching from the west at the same altitude I was. So the moment he set his altitude, I which was the altitude I was at, I started looking out the window immediately for this other aircraft. I didn't see him, but he said he was west of the field, and I was east of the field. So I'm basically no threat. But the controller kept saying, where are you? I don't see you. So once the controller fails to identify the aircraft's location, as a pilot, if I'm paying attention to the frequency and what's going on around me and what's going on in the frequency, I became concerned, because she couldn't identify the aircraft. She didn't know where he was. So I was looking I was I was on what's called the downwind, which is where you're parallel to I'm gonna land on the runway here, and I'm opposite direction to the direction that I'm going to land. Right? So I'm gonna fly a rectangle. I'm gonna go parallel to the runway, pass it a little bit, I'm gonna make a right turn onto what's called the crosswind, then I'm gonna make an another right turn onto what's called the final. So I'm looking over my shoulder to see where the center of the runway is because of the that's how you determine when you're gonna pull power and start descending and apply flaps is your location when you're passing a runway opposite direction. So I'm looking over my shoulder at the, at the runway. I decide it's time to start pulling the power. I look up, and there's an aircraft right in front of me coming the other way. And at the same time I looked up, the controller said, Cessna 4 zero uniformed, you have traffic at 12 o'clock a half mile opposite direction. And he he was he was not half a mile away. He was a football field away. He was very, very scary close, and we were opposite direction, and I was probably doing 80 or 90 knots. I was in a Cessna 172 at the time, and he was probably doing the same, and, I just pushed the yoke forward as far as it would go and turned it as far to the right as I could, which is dangerous as hell at low altitude. But I missed him, and I didn't put the aircraft into an incredibly unstable you know, I didn't spin it or put it into a tremendous dive. I was able to get out of the way and recover right away. Did you fight him after you both landed? No. It just happens. You know? It's like air. Not at all. Not at all. It didn't even occur to me to go talk to the guy. Okay. He just didn't he people get lost. It happens. You know? Or or they say the wrong word, you know, on west of the field. Thinking you're thinking the whole time I'm used to the field, but you say the word west. It just happens. It's scary. You know? So so I wanna get to 911. So I have one more question. Sure. In 19, I guess, 81, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic Yeah. Controllers when they had a union strike. Whether he was right or wrong, I have no idea. I only looked up this statistic right before I came over here. But the the I guess the feeling was he'll never do that because how will people take up take off and land if there's no air traffic controllers, and if it takes 3 years, as you say, to train. So why did he think he could do that, and and why did we, as a country, survive that? Well, it happened, like I said, I got hired in 88 and, didn't start working as a controller as a trainee in New York Center until January of 89. So it was long after I got there long after the strike. However, that having been said, the reason I got a job is because of the strike. They were still desperate for air traffic controllers 8 years later. You know? So, but what did they do the day after? Well, the day what they do what they do typically in in any situation where staffing is is a problem, right, is they put tremendous restrictions on the space that is required between aircraft. So so the the New York center will say to New York approach control, I want 30 miles between all departures on the same airway. Right? Or some something and and they can be a little draconian, you know, and and passengers on airplanes suffer from stuff like that whenever large restrictions get But did the economy suffer, you think, because maybe less people wanted to fly at that point? I would I wouldn't be shocked at all if that was the case. Because I guess there was there was a recession around then, but I didn't, you know, it was related to a whole bunch of things. I don't know how much this was a factor. That never occurred to me to think about it. That's a good question. So so okay. 911, you wake up, you go to work. It's the most beautiful day in the world. It was awesome. It was so beautiful. The sky was so blue. I couldn't believe it. And like I told you before, when I was walking into work, I stopped, and I spent several minutes just gawking at the sky because it was so crystalline and beautiful. It was like a special day. I remember thinking that too at, like, 7 AM. Like, oh my gosh. This is amazing. Yeah. And pilots and controllers refer to that as a cabo day, ceilings and visibility unlimited, which pilots love because they can see all kinds of stuff, and you and and when you're working in in a radar facility that covers areas around New York City, you constantly hear pilots saying, wow, the city looks gorgeous today, All the time, and that's what they were doing that morning. The city looks fantastic. It's really beautiful. So, do you want me to keep going? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So so I went into work. I sat down. I got to work sometime between 6:30 and 7 in the morning, and forgive me. I it's been so long. I don't remember the timeline or what exactly time it was when things started to happen, but it 8:45 was the first hit, but, oh, but your timeline started well before then. So in the vicinity of 8 o'clock, things start happening. So I'm working I'm sitting at a a departure sector that works departures west and southwest out of New York. It's called the Yardley sector, sector 55. So west out of New York means, like, if something takes off from JFK, it's probably going to, like, Chicago or California or That's northwest, so different different area. So if you're gonna go out of Kennedy and you're gonna go to l yeah. Southern California, sometimes Northern California, depending on the day of the week and where the winds are. Yeah. You'll come out over, you'll leave Kennedy, head for Colts Neck, New Jersey, and then Robbinsville, New Jersey, which is kinda near Trenton. Those are the names of, radio aids to navigation, actually. Colts Neck is a VOR. Robbinsville is a VOR. And and then they head west from there. Oh, they don't just go straight west after No. They don't. You you can't come off the runway and just go. Right? You have to have a very the environment has to be very structured. The way departures go has to be very structured so that so that the arrival paths and the departure paths don't conflict with one another. I see. And so that all the departure paths from multiple airports don't conflict with one another. Like a plane takes off and, like, immediately gets out of the way of the plane's descending. Yeah. So the yeah. And so controllers and we had you know, that's stuff that we know by rote. It's it's the departure controllers know where to put the airplanes. They have gates that they have to put them through before they get to a certain departure fix. So the departure fix for Kennedy is called Robbinsville, and then LaGuardia and its satellite airport, which is West White Plains, and, Newark and its tremendous number of satellite airports use other departure fixes to go the same direction. So I have 2 southwestbound departure fixes out of Newark and LaGuardia, and a westbound departure fix out of Kennedy. And those 2 those three routes all cross one another. Sorry. There's 2 southwestbounds that are parallel to one another, and they both cross the westbound Kennedys. So that's a little you know, that adds a little complication to the mix right near right there that makes the sector a little more complicated. Anytime you have crossing traffic, it's a little complicated, especially when some of it's, you know, Anytime you have crossing traffic, it's a little complicated, especially when some of it's climbing and some of it's descending. So on these southwest departure routes, I work departures out of New York. I also work arrivals into Baltimore and Washington National Airport, Ronald Reagan Airport, which pissed a lot of controllers off when they named when they named the airport after Ronald Reagan, because Oh, because he fired at the moment. Exactly. So, so the I was busy. I had a lot of arrivals into Washington and into Baltimore, and I had a lot of departures out of New York. And so, a lot of vectoring, a lot of speed control. And I had a situation where I had 2 airplanes landing at Charlotte, North Carolina, and we had a restriction in place for Charlotte. We had to deliver 30 miles in trail to airplanes landing at Charlotte. So I had a guy who came from Boston Center who was level at 26,000 feet, ended up climbing at 28, and I had a departure out of New York who wanted to go into the mid thirties also landing Charlotte. And he came out really just directly underneath this other airplane, so it was a US Air behind a Delta. And the US Air came out, and and so now I have this once so now I have a situation where I have 2 airplanes that are basically collocated, and I have to put 30 miles between them. And and it's a short sector, so I got a lot of work to do. Big vectors, big speed control. So I slow the departure down to 250 knots immediately, and, try to speed the guy up who's in level flight. And, so while this is going on, because I slowed the back guy down, he begins to climb very rapidly. So you the they transfer their their air speed into vertical speed. Because all you have to do to slow a jet down is just pull the column back, point the nose up, you lose some speed, but you start gaining altitude rapidly. So the point was is this guy climbed very rapidly. I got him far enough behind the delta that I could get him above the delta, but the ceiling of my airspace was 28,000 feet. So I needed permission from the controller who owned the airspace above me to climb the US Air higher into that structure, into his airspace. So I happen to have an assistant sitting next to me, we call it a d side or, a hand off controller or an h side. And I asked her, call 42, see if you can get higher for the US Air. So she calls, and I hear her talking while I'm busy, and I'm talking to airplanes, and and I hear her talking. I can't hear what the other controller is telling her. And she hangs up the phone, and she starts laughing. And she says, he says he's got a hijack over there. He can't take the point out. Point out is what we call it when we, you know, push another aircraft into another sector's airspace without giving them communications with the airplane. So she's laughing because she didn't believe him? Yeah. Because and it's because the guy who was sitting at that sector, sector 42, had a kind of a flare for the dramatic. And But saying that it was a plane hijack, that that seems like borderline illegal in such a professional capacity. Absolutely. You know? So she but she didn't believe him. You know? She didn't believe him, and I I guess because also that day, I think a lot of people throughout the day were experienced going into denial. Exactly. And it's central it's central to the whole thing. I mean, is that it was an experience that was just so far out of our realm of past experience that it was it was not it couldn't possibly happen. Right? So she's saying that was in this upper air space that said come out of Boston? No. This is the LaGuardia or new departure. I can't remember where he took off of. I wanna say LaGuardia, but, it was US Air 542. So he's climbing rapidly, and and, I had to level him off 28,000 feet because I couldn't go any higher that than that without Dave's permission. Dave was the first name in the controller who was working at 42. So we didn't believe Dave, and so she's kinda laughing. He says he's got a hijack over there, and I said, I'll get a real controller over there, you know, just off the cuff, because we always kid each other all the time, sort of relentlessly, actually. So but it it turned out to be true. What had happened was is Dave was had accepted the hand off on a flight coming from Boston Center, who had departed Boston and was headed for the West Coast. It was American 11. And, the Boston Center controller called him and said, look. We think American 11 has been hijacked. Keep an eye on him and and I'll get back. Why do they think that? There was some there was some talk on the frequency. I think the hijackers accidentally keyed the mic up, and you could hear over the frequency or I couldn't, but the the controllers and the other pilots who were on the Boston Center frequency at that time heard one of the hijackers broadcasting inadvertently over the frequency, saying things like stay in your seats, everything's gonna be okay, that kind of crap. So so they were pretty sure, but officially, they were saying Correct. We didn't know for sure, but the but the Boston center controller picked up on it right away and and thought, look. I think this guy's a hijack. And then and so then you get things that confirm that right away. If the aircraft I have 4 aircraft that air traffic controllers are talking to don't do anything unless we tell them to. Right? They're not allowed to turn. They're not allowed to change their altitude. They're not allowed to change their speed without without permission, within, you know, within a certain, amount of reason. Anyway, so then the the American Airlines aircraft that they turn the transponder off, big no no. What's the transponder? The transponder is the device in the aircraft that broadcasts that 4 digit code that tells us, okay. I told that guy to squawk 409 or sorry, 4055. That must be American 11 or whatever his beacon code was at that time. We call it a beacon code, And when we instruct the aircraft to set it, we use the word squawk. So we'll tell if I need an aircraft to change his beacon code, because maybe I have 2 airplanes on the same code, which happens occasionally, you tell the aircraft, reset your transponder squawk 4053 or whatever the number is gonna be. And you the computer will assign it for you. So, anyway, the guy they had turned off his transponder. So now that changes some things. Now we can't see the altitude that the aircraft is broadcasting anymore. So now we radar? Because we have there are 2 kinds of radar. There's primary radar, which is normally what you think of when you think of radar, where the the antenna sends out a a radio signal, it bounces off an object, and that signal is returned to the antenna, and it and it calculates how far away it is based on the time it took, how much rotation took place between when the signal was sent and when it was received. So that's that's called primary radar, or reflective radar. Then there's something called secondary radar or beacon radar, and that is and it's attached to the same antenna. There's a device on the antenna called an interrogator that sends out a signal, and then when it hits an aircraft that has an operating transponder, the transponder responds to that signal, responds to that interrogation. It broadcasts its 4 digit code, and some transponders are capable of broadcasting the aircraft's altitude. We call that mode c, and then there's there's all kinds of new stuff now that airplanes can broadcast to us through radar and through other surveillance systems. But, at the time, the the important point was is that we could no longer see his altitude. So when it changed, the the target that we were looking at changed, the presentation of the target changes shape. So so now we can see what we believe is an American is American 11. We see a primary a very strong primary target because the radar is pretty good. It's it saw the target. No problem. When it gets a low altitude and, you know, there's ground clutter or you or you have lots of precipitation or or, temperature changes in the air, then radar can get a little iffy. But we had perfect radar target on the guy. We believed it was we were still believed that the target we were looking at was American 11. And he turned up to the north first, and then he turned to the south and basically flew down the Hudson River Valley toward New York. Now were the guys in Boston who they were the first ones to see, okay, this is a hijacked situation. Yeah. Was there anything else they could do? Like, could they I'm assuming they alerted the military immediately. Could the military have just, like, flown a plane right into that plane or do something? But, you know, it's tough for me to say what the military could possibly have done. But from my understanding of the situation at the time, there was no protocol. Right. You know? The what are they gonna do? And how long did it take anyway to control? Gonna order who's gonna order a fighter jet to shoot down an aircraft full of American civilians? Yeah. Particularly when you don't know what's going on or where it's going. Like, maybe it's just gonna land somewhere and have Exactly. And the vast majority of hijacks in the past all you know, the aircraft goes someplace else, and then they make demands. You know? Right. And that's the experience that we had all trained for. We'd never trained for what happened on 911. Did you have another question in there? I'm No. No. No. Okay. So so, anyways, we're looking at the target of what we believe is American 11, and we're pretty certain that we're looking at at the airplane. It turned out to be the case. We were correct. And, so I had no longer I was no longer busy at this time. Now once the American starts, heading southbound, you know, we knew we knew we had a hijack at that point. Once the transponder turned off and the guy turned, the controllers in Boston Center were absolutely sure they had a hijack. And somewhere in there, one of the flight attendants onboard American 11 had called American Airlines, had called their operating base, and told them that the aircraft had been hijacked and they had murdered the pilots, and I think a passenger as well. So we're looking at this target that we believe is American 11 heading south down the Hudson River, and it and it doesn't occur to us, to any of us, that a crash is imminent. Right? That that this it's just completely outside the realm of possibility. Like, what was in the realm of possibility? Like, what were as as because they were gonna take the aircraft somewhere, Right? Probably offshore from the United States, land it, and make demands like they always do. You know? But, like, so, like, it's a big plane, so they had fuel to get anywhere pretty much. Right? Well, the aircraft was was fueled to go all the way to California, so they they could get some place that they wanted to. You know? God only knows where. And and it didn't occur to us really to think about where, because at the same time, we're still working. We have traffic to to take care of. Right? So but, what I did at the time was because I was no longer busy is all the sectors have the ability to communicate with the military. So I called, a trying to think about what I can say and what I can't. I called a military radar approach control that is responsible for identifying aircraft, offshore before they enter the United States. Huntress IDs is the name was was the name that they use, and it was part of NORAD, North American Regional Air Defense. So the people that I talked to work up in what used to be Griffis Air Force Base in Rome, New York. So so their their job in general is to prevent aircraft from sneaking into the US? Yes. In general, that was the this particular group of people that I was gonna talk to. So I called Huntress, and I tried to tell them, listen. We have a hijack. It's American 11. He's a Boeing 767. I think that's what he was flying, And he's southbound over to Hudson River. Can you see him? He's about 15 or 20 miles north of the city. I couldn't I can't remember exactly where he was at the time I called. And the person who answered the phone was a a military, radar not a controller, I don't think, but a a, you know, a radar surveillance operator of some sort. And she seemed very young, and she said, where is he again? And I told her again where he was. And she said, where? I don't see him. And I and I gave her a very precise location. She goes, I said I said, can't you see him? It's a very strong primary target. It's it's it's the only one there within miles. You know, there aren't any other airplanes really within several miles of the target. She goes, I can't see him. I'm looking at thousands of airplanes. I can't see that one. So I hung up on him. I gave up on NORAD and hung up the phone. And then, while this was going on, right, so every eye in the room is staring at this target very intensely. And how did you how did anybody given that there was normal aircraft at the time, like, you say 300 in the area, how did everybody Well, not that many on that day, but But how many how was it possible to focus on all the other aircraft? Probably everybody was, like, obsessed with, oh my gosh. What's going on here? Yeah. No. We we managed to get the job done. It's part of the job is is, this division of attention where you, you know, you jump back and forth between things. You're looking at one thing. You do something else. At this point, had has there had there been any command? Like, all aircraft immediately land? Or No. Not yet. K. No. Because, you know, in in in the beginning, it's like the fog of war, really. I mean, it's like there's a very there's it's unsettling. It's disconcerting. Everybody's not feeling right, and, you know, you don't you know, we're we weren't trained to project into the future what might be happening and what what can we can do about it. You know, we're all we we do, air traffic controllers keep airplanes apart from one another. That's our job. You know? We keep them apart from one another and apart from the ground. And, so we're looking at this one target, and the controller at 42 was was calling other controllers, and he's on the phone with other people, and he's trying to coordinate and say, you know, can, you know, can do you see this guy? Make sure you're watching this target. And the manager of the facility was came in and standing behind the guy at 42. He's got a phone in each ear, and and so everybody's looking at this target, and we're trying to work at the same time. So while Dave is talking to the guy standing behind him, the manager of the facility, I think, somebody on the other side of the room notices that United 1 70 five's target separates from its full data block, which is not a Meaning meaning it had its route planned out, and now it's separate from it. Right. So the airplane going to California? So what happened yeah. This is another one going to California. I want I wanna say United 175 was going to San Francisco, also departed Boston. So what happened was is somebody on board the aircraft, whether it was the hijackers, whether it would happen in the scuffle, whether it was intentional, we don't know. Somebody changed the beacon code. So they didn't turn the transponder off in United 175, but they did change the beacon code. So now the computer doesn't know who that airplane is. So United 1 70 five's data box starts flying down the airway, but the target turned off the airway and began to climb. And so a controller behind me, who didn't have any traffic at the time, who was just looking at the what was going on, said, hey. There's an intruder over Allentown. Over Allentown, he was in the vicinity of Allentown, Pennsylvania. And the reason he called it an intruder is because when the radar doesn't know who the target is, it changes the presentation of the target. It changes it into the letter I, f, actually the capital I, and that means that that target is what we call a mode c intruder. He's in airspace that he doesn't belong in or the computer doesn't know who he is, and it turned out to be united 175. So now we're staring at united 175. We still don't know that the American is about to or has crashed already. I can't remember exactly what the timeline is, like I said. When you hung up on NORAD, did you call another military? No. No. I by that time, I had work to do. You know what? Okay. So, so we're looking at this now we're looking at this united target. We're looking at the united target, and I I wanna say maybe the American target had already disappeared, which means he had crashed, you know, by the time we're looking at the situation with the United 175. I don't recall. And it turns out that one of the departures out of Kennedy, who was on my frequency, actually asked me, you know, they start saying, look. Does did you guys know that the North Tower of the World Trade Center is on fire? There's a huge column of smoke coming out of it. I said no. And it and it didn't I didn't put 2 and 2 together right then and there. I it didn't occur to me that it could possibly have been American 11. So American 11 was flying southbound the Hudson, but because United 175 also started to become a problem, you called NORAD. You did what you could. You started focusing on this other situation. Was there anybody tracking American 11 right into the World Trade Center? Yeah. There were people watching. Absolutely. In fact, the guy who was working the Kennedy high sector vectored an aircraft to intercept that target to see if he could locate the American, because we wanted to know. Right? So he vectored a an American Eagles flight in a regional jet. Not American Eagles, American Eagle. He vectored this guy to the locate the last known location of the target and asked him if he saw any airplanes in there, and the guy said, no. There's nothing. And the last known altitude of the American, I I wanna say, was 29,000 feet, somewhere in that vicinity. But, anyway, so the United's target starts climbing, turning, and now he's on the wrong code. He's off course, and he's not talking. He's not answering. Dave is Dave is calling him. United 1 75 New York. United 1 75, if you hear New York ident, which is, you know, they push a button on the transponder, it makes the target presentation change again to to grab our attention. That didn't happen. No response from the aircraft. So now we have another hijack, and and Dave is, you know, he's getting very, very upset now. 2 hijacks within, you know, 15 minutes of one another. Like, what was it how did you know he was getting very upset? What did he start saying? I don't you know, I can't even remember what what the words were, but the the the room the tension in the room had was already very, very high, and it just went up another 5 notches. Like, were you thinking, how many more are there? No. I you know, it's just one thing. We're just taking things as they came and dealing with them 1 at a time with as they came, and and the the and as you know already and as we're gonna get to, the this United becomes a big problem for my 2 departures that I was working that were going to Charlotte. So it turns out that the the United starts turning southbound and descending rapidly. And when he started turning to the south and descending, I'm I'm thinking, you know, that he could be a problem for these 2 guys. Because you you you just had 2 guys take off. Right. And they're and they're set well, I had one who was en route at 26 or 28,000 feet. I can't remember. And and the US Air went up to 28 behind him. So I have these 2 southwestbound departures, and the United States turning toward them and descending. Now I'm getting really worried. Now I'm trying to formulate a plan. What am I gonna do? If I descend these guys, are they gonna get under him? Is he gonna descend rapidly and beat him down? If I climb them, can I climb them? I can't climb them. Dave's busy. I can't talk to him right now. I can't penetrate his airspace. I mean, push comes to shove. I can do whatever I want if there aren't any targets around. You know, I have I have that kind of flexibility available to me. The rules have some bendability to them. So the United starts turning toward these guys and descending at them, and now I'm thinking, alright, where are the winds? If I turn them to the right, they're gonna slow down. If I turn them to the left, they're gonna speed up. I think I can get away from this guy if I go to the left. So my plan now is is basically to go to the left, but I'm gonna wait and see what he does a little bit more. What's he gonna do? Is he gonna turn southbound? Is he gonna continue like the Americans' last path was southbound? Right? Or is he gonna turn toward the city? Is he an emergency? Is he not a hijack? Does this guy just have serious problems? He needs to land the airplane. So we were all hoping that that was the case. We really were thinking, you know, maybe maybe this guy has a serious issue he's trying to deal with. He can't talk to us. He's just trying to get the airplane down and put it on the ground. So he starts turning toward New York City. Now as he's he turns from south to southeast, now he's a real threat to my 2 he's definitely a threat. There's no question about it. So I start telling my 2 airplanes about his presence. Delta 2511, you have traffic at 1 o'clock and 1 5 miles southbound. We believe it's a hijacked Boeing 767 with United Colors. You know, you can and I then I gave him permission to take evasive action. I said, if if this guy becomes a problem for you, do whatever you need to do to miss him. Could he see on his radar? He didn't see him. And then I called the traffic to the US Air behind the Delta, and I was so worked up and the frequency was getting a little garbled because other, you know, other people are trying to talk. When the US Air responded to the traffic call that I gave him, he said, is that the guy we're following? And at the time, I might have responded affirmative because I didn't hear exactly what he said. Because I thought that he meant, is that the guy that the guy we're following is is trying to miss? 2 different things completely. Yeah. You know? So then now I'm I'm thinking, alright. Time time's up. I got no choices left. I really have to move these guys out of the way because they're not gonna they're not you know, it's it's easier for me to though what the path of I wasn't sure which way to go. Right? Because if the guy where United was at. If the guy turned any tighter and I went to the right, I was gonna put him head I was gonna put him together, you know, which is what I'm trained to not do. You know, it's every goes against the grain of everything inside me physically. You can feel it physically as a controller when you do something that's wrong. Your body reacts to it immediately, even before the your conscious brain knows that you've made a mistake. Your body knows. You start to sweat, you start to shake. Your face turns red. Whatever. So the United's descending, and now he's pointed right at him. So I I get I finally threw in the towel, said I gotta I gotta do something. Delta 2511, turn left immediately heading 200. US Air 542, turn left immediately heading 200. So that was about a 50 degree left turn. They both turn. They respond to my transmissions with, in my judgment, not sufficient enthusiasm. The Delta responded very nonchalantly to the instruction because we don't tell airplane we don't use the word immediately when we give an aircraft instructions. If we do, they can do things that hurt people in the airplane. Right? If I tell an aircraft to climb immediately and somebody's standing up, they're going to the floor. And if the if the aircraft climbs sufficiently rapidly, anybody who's standing up is gonna be on the floor. If I tell an aircraft to descend rapidly from level flight and he pushes the nose over very fast, people who are not belted in are gonna be hitting the ceiling. So you you risk breaking people literally breaking people's necks. So we don't use the word immediately unless it's really, really called for. Gosh. I'm gonna use my seatbelts from now on. Yeah. I never do. Right. Right. Yeah. If you're not seated and and another story altogether, I had a situation with severe turbulence where a passenger was hurt because they actually flew up, hit the ceiling, and then got slammed back down into the floor. But, anyway, so I turned the airplanes to the left, and now I'm I mean, I'm not a very religious guy, but I was basically praying that what I had done was gonna be the correct thing. And, unfortunately in random chance okay. So you don't know where the United is exactly. Right? Or you see it No. No. I see him on the radar. I know exactly where he is. I mean, was there I mean, air is big. Like, was there oh, okay. Admittedly, they would get closer too close for comfort. Like you mentioned earlier, 5 miles is the perimeter you have to stay outside of. Maybe they were you worried they were just gonna get within those 5 miles, or you were actually worried about a collision? Worried about the threat of a collision. Was that, like, really possible in your in your like, what were the odds even if you had just left it to random chance? They weren't good. I I could tell you that. Had I not turned them, the targets would have, superimposed at the same altitude. Okay. So because they were going on the same air lane or Well, no. They were just the where they're low where they were located, when United turned right into these guys head on. In fact, we looked at the data, and what actually happened was the the both the Delta and the US Air responded to, so let me back up a little bit. There's another device on the aircraft called TCAS, terminal collision avoidance system. TCAS provides radar in limited radar information to the pilots. And if it detects a threat from another aircraft, and happily, they didn't turn the mode c off on the other aircraft. The transponder was still broadcasting, and it was broadcasting its altitude. Right? So if TCAS can see the other aircraft's altitude, it can it can formulate a solution to miss the other other plane. And it will instruct the pilots, descend, descend now, or climb climb now. It doesn't make lateral decisions. The software hasn't gotten there yet. They're working on it. But but it's not very effective. Make those like, this is in 2001. Were they making those decisions based on kind of some other pilot wrote, if this happens, then do this? Or was there kind of AI involved? Or There's an algorithm. Absolutely. Yeah. It uses an algorithm that's very effective, and its and its its job is to do to solve problems that we've screwed up, right, as controllers. And and also just stuff happens. You know? So the the Delta and the USAir both received the the Delta didn't descend, but the USAir did. And what we think happened is is that the hijackers actually heard the TCAS onboard their aircraft and stopped descending because they leveled off at 28.2, 28,200 feet when they when they passed the Delta. And they went you know, when the situation was in play, I'm looking at them, they're 8 miles apart, pointed right at each other, opposite direction, closing in a 1000 miles an hour. Took my breath away, almost physically. How many miles apart were they? 8 miles apart. 8 miles apart. So going a 1000 miles an hour, it's like 12 seconds they're gonna hit. It wasn't it wasn't pretty. So, anyway, so the turns ended up working. I turned them both. The hijack aircraft went behind them, but not by much. And the reason it wasn't is you know, the turns would have worked much better, but the the hijacker stopped turning the airplane. So my solution became not so good anymore because they weren't doing and they weren't doing what they were doing when I initiated the solution. You know? So I I I used to beat myself up about, you know, maybe I should have turned them to the right, maybe I should have turned them sooner, all kinds of stuff. And in the end, it doesn't matter because they didn't hit. So the guy ascending, though, the the guy who you instructed to ascend, now he's in because the because the United, 1 75, was no longer descending. The one that you told to ascend was now in trouble. Well, no. I had him level at 28,000 feet. So he was level at 28, and the US the Delta was level at 28, and the US Air was behind him level at 26,000 feet. So the hijackers missed the Delta, and then they barely missed the US Air also because they started descending again. Once they passed the US Air once they passed the delta, now they're a threat to the US Air because they start descending, and he's at 26,000 feet. So they descended right into him. But, again, the turns worked, so he went the hijackers went behind the US Air, but they were close enough that the US Air pilot told me I'm responding to an RA, a resolution advisory from the TKS, and they're obligated. Pilots are obligated to do what that thing tells them to do. So if the device says, descend now, he has to descend. There's a lot more to it than that, but but, basically and and he has to inform me that he's doing it. So he says, I'm responding to a to a a TCAS RA, and I said, I'm sorry about that. I really thought it was gonna hit the delta, and basically forgot about the US. But I had turned to both, and it and it turned out to be a nonissue. But, so I'm all I don't we don't know that there's been a crash yet in in this room. Other people do. Right? Because people who are watching the news know that an aircraft destructed the World Trade Center, but, and the the facility chief who was standing behind 42 with a phone in each ear, I think he knew that an aircraft had struck the World Trade Center, but I wasn't I don't think he knew yet that it was the American. And then we watched the United pointed at the city, and we watched them descending, and he was coming down fast, you know, 3000 feet a minute, 5000 feet a minute, 7000 feet a minute at one point. Extremely fast. In fact, so fast that it was difficult to see later on watch the images on the television where you see the United striking the South Tower at World Trade Center, and, I'm amazed that they were actually able to recover from the dive before they hit the the building because they were coming down so fast. Really scary. And, you know, and and we tried to tell ourselves, you know, maybe it's still an it's just an emergency, and they're trying to go to Newark because they were pointed right at Newark before they were point you know, because Newark was between them and and the city. Did they have to go past the city to go around for the south tower? No. Did they have to go into the ocean? No. They were they were coming basically from the southwest, so they came from, like, Sandy Hook, New Jersey area. They Okay. It kinda overflew that area. But they had to turn the aircraft violently because they weren't pointed right at the building. You know? So that at the at the at the end, you see the aircraft in a very, very steep turn when it impacts the building, and and that's because they weren't, you know, they weren't aiming properly beforehand. Not as easy to fly an airplane that's doing 700 miles an hour over the ground as you might think. Yeah. I can't imagine, actually, like, how do you going 700 miles an hour and you're just a few miles away, hitting, you know while on the one hand, I can understand the concept of landing on a runway because you're slowing down, you're descending, you're on a route, but hitting a target at that speed seems difficult. Like okay. And this is a weird question, but on a scale of 0 to 10, would you say these guys were good pilots? No. Absolutely not. But, but you don't have to be that good a pilot to just point the thing. You know? You grab the steering wheel, the yoke in an aircraft or the control column, and you point it. You know? That's that's all they had to do. No. But they picked the right day. You know? The visibility was perfect. Right. If they were gonna do it, that was the day. But anyway, so we watched the United descending, and one of the controllers says maybe he's trying to get to the fours at Newark, meaning there there are 2 runway number 4 at at Newark, run, 4 left and 4 right. So maybe he's trying to hit 1 of the fours at Newark, and the guy behind me who's also, a former commercial pilot said, no. No. No. He's coming down too fast. He's going he's going too fast. There's no way he's gonna make Newark. He's going in, meaning he's gonna crash. And somebody said, no. No. No. Maybe he's gonna go to LaGuardia, which is on the other side. It was directly opposite of, you know, the World Trade Center. It was kind of a line. Newark World Trade Center, LaGuardia. Right. So maybe he's trying to get to LaGuardia, and the guy behind me again, he says, no. He's coming down too hard, and we watched. The radar targets update every 12 seconds, and I don't remember the exact altitudes we saw during the target presentations, but, you know, I wanna say 1200 feet, 800 feet. And somewhere in there, the guy behind me, Jimmy, says he says, nope. 2 more hits. That's it. Meaning, we're gonna see 2 more targets appear on the radar, and then he's gonna be gone. So we all knew at that point that the aircraft was gonna crash, and then he was gonna crash in lower Manhattan. And we're just, you know, terrified. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. It was it was awful. Both prior to the the near mid air collision situation that we had encountered before, dead silence in that room until until the targets passed each other. I think I held my breath the entire time. And I actually that's not true because I I remember jumping up out of my chair and yelling obscenities at the radar. You know, because I turned these guys, I thought I had done the right thing, but then the hijackers stopped turning, and they got much closer than I intended to ever get. And I I screamed at the radar. But then, you know, so then we watched the United disappear from the radar, and we knew we had crashed. And it was just kinda like, the hell do we do now? You know? And and, but at the same time, I'm working traffic. I have things to do, and I had a job to do. So I'm talking to airplanes, climbing them, descending them, doing And all the airplanes that you were talking to, at that point, they knew what was happening, right, or not really? I didn't care at that point because I had now I had work to do. Right? Because Did you have to land them all? Was that the order then? Well, I didn't stay in my seat long enough. What happened was is the supervisor walked into the room, and he came over to me and he said, do you wanna get up? And I said, if you have somebody to get me up, I'd really rather get up because I was having a a tough time. I could've worked, but it was just a tremendous I was under tremendous amount of stress at that time. I mean, it all work. Like, what when you say tough time, though, like, were you what were you what were you feeling exactly? What does that mean? Okay. So that's that's a good question. So controllers, our job is to keep people safe. And in the end, the way we can we think about pilots, passengers, airplanes. They're kinda like our babies. Right? We take care of them. Some controllers do a better job than others. You know, we're they're we're people. But, in the end, they're our babies. You know? And watching an aircraft crash at any time, regardless of, you know, the cause, is a tremendously negative thing for a controller, and it can have tremendous emotional effects on controllers' lives. I don't know if you remember the crash in Sioux City, Iowa, where the DC 10 crashed and then flew off into the cornfield, or it didn't fly off, but crashed near the runway and then skidded down into a cornfield, and a lot of people died. I met the controller who was working that day, and it ruined his life. He became a raging alcoholic, couldn't get the images out of his skull, you know, straight PTSD. So in the room, we we were having a very difficult time coming to terms with what had just happened. And, my voice was cracking. I'm talking to airplanes, and I'm I'm yeah. Tears are streaming down my face because I knew everybody on on on that aircraft had just perished, and god only knows how many people on the ground. We didn't know it was the World Trade Center. We didn't know where the aircraft had crashed, but I just knew it was lower Manhattan. And you you were too busy to set to just yell out, hey. What happened to that plane? Or No. We knew what happened. But but but you just you knew it had crashed, but when did you find know it was World Trade Center? Within a few minutes because because the the chief and the deputy were standing behind 42 when, when the near midair collision happened, and they watched. And as the United descended toward New York City, the chief sent the deputy into the cafeteria to go look at the television, to look at CNN. So that the deputy walked into the cafeteria seconds before the United hit the World Trade Center, and and he knew it was gonna happen. He he actually said to the people next to him, there's another one coming. And seconds later, you saw the images of the United crashing into the World Trade Center. So and then he came back and reported, and he had a phone tune. And so we knew within seconds of the of the United where he'd crashed. But, did you start telling planes then this would happen, or you're just kinda like No. No. No. No. You don't hit You're not allowed? You don't wanna no. It's just that you don't wanna transfer that stress to the pilots. They got enough to to worry about already. You know? So so just bring it one second. At one point, when you right before you called NORAD, you said you had to figure out what you were allowed to tell me, what you couldn't. What not I don't want you to tell me what you weren't allowed to tell me. No. There's there's really nothing there. It's it's just I was I just wanted to pause for a minute and think about what I was gonna say. Okay. Alright. I just wondered if there was some other There's no there's no top secret stuff. Nothing. No. Controllers don't even have to have secret clearance. So the military, it sounds like they were not even really involved at all in the It turns out that they were deeply involved, but not the person that I talked to. Okay. They they were aware of the situation. As soon as Boston Center became aware of it, they were made aware of it right away. But there's nothing they could really do? No. I don't think so. Unless they sent them missile. I mean, listen. Even if we had airborne fighters over New York City that just happened to be there, let's just take that as a hypothetical case. Right? You got airborne fighters who happen to be in the vicinity of New York City who are in a position to maybe respond to this situation. What are they gonna do? There was no protocol. There's no Right. There's nobody that can order them to shoot down the civilian aircraft. There's nobody that will. So let's look at it first from the military's point of view. Let's say they knew, yes, these 2 planes are definitely heading to the World Trade Center. Let's say they knew a 100% chance these 2 planes are gonna hit the World Trade Center. Do you think they would have had the capability, and do you think they would have made the decision to at least to send missiles to shoot down the plane? No. Absolutely not. Because the person who gave that order would have been vilified for the rest of their lives. Right. Because then you don't Even if it turned out that they were here. Because you just don't know. Right. You know? I don't know. You're saying if they were a 100% sure that they that they knew they were gonna crash into the World Trade Center, which it's just sorry, James. It's a silly hypothetical because because right. Because because once you destroy them, then no one would ever know that that's what was gonna happen. Yeah. And all this guy is known for is killing all the civilians. Right. Not that he saved Right. The world trades him. And and I get and the reason I asked him that way though was it's it's, of course, related to your decision because you were in charge of 2 missiles, essentially, the 2 other civilian jets that could have taken them out. This the conversation that you're about to have with me came up several times after after the situation happened. And what you're you're gonna say in my mind, I'm seeing you I think that you're gonna say, listen, Chris. What if they had actually hit in the air? Right? You would have saved all the people in the World Trade Center. 1 of the towers wouldn't have collapsed. A lot of people on the ground wouldn't have died. You know, some more people on that other aircraft would have perished, but it would have been a different situation altogether. And my answer to that is, that that's not even something that as an air traffic controller that I could possibly contemplate. Right. Letting 2 airplanes allowing 2 airplanes close enough together to hit. It's it's it goes against everything I'm trained to do so much that it actually makes me sick right now thinking about it. And it's it's also just too because it sounds like your your job during the day I don't wanna simplify it too much, but I'm but simplifying it for abstractions. Of course. Your job during the day is like a video game. Right? You're you're right. That's exactly what it is. So so There's no no that's that's not a simplification. It's exactly what it is. It's it's just like a video game, and we win every day. Right. And so for me to say, okay, well, here's a video game that you've played a million times. Suddenly, there it's not Pac Man anymore. It's it's Pac Man. And by the way, this asteroid ship is also in there. Yeah. And one of the Pac Men have to run into the asteroid. Like, it almost doesn't make any sense. So that on that level. And the other or maybe another way they'll view it is if someone's playing Pac Man, they try to win the game. An abstract way to think of it is, you know, I better lose lose this game so I could do something else with my time. That also that would not it it's abstracting outside of the video game Right. Which you're not you would never do. Absolutely not. No question. You know, and and when I say it's like a video game, I I don't mean to to reduce the seriousness of the job. Right? It's a we know. Right. We know what we're responsible for, controllers, but we do actually view the the situation because it's it's you're doing the same thing as a video game. You take actions that have responses that you see play out on the screen. It's just like a video game. It it really is. It's it's a So what what happened at this point? Were you aware of all the the people who crashed in Pennsylvania and the people who crashed into the Pentagon? No. We did not know yet. But, so a lot of us were sequestered in a room. They made a tape you know, they made us, recount our experience on a tape recorder. And you did that for for, a cover your a*s reasons or for intelligence reasons? I, you know, I I think that the FAA at that time, I mean, all large bureaucracies engage in cover your a*s behavior at all times, but the I think at that time, they were thinking, listen. We this is gonna be there's gonna be a tremendous criminal investigation. We're gonna have to get as much evidence as we can. And it turned out that listening to us, you know, some people were bawling. They were in tears. You know? So it was passing the microphone around and and giving your your, version of what just happened, and it turned out that people were making mistakes. And, you know, we were already diverging from the facts of the situation, and they didn't need this tape recording we were making, all that they had all the data they needed, you know, we had the radar data, we have all the radio frequency data recorded, So it was it turned out to be a a non thing. But, one of the things I wanted to say was that, so I don't remember how long after 911 had happened, but a friend of mine says, listen, Chris, I have a friend who's a a reporter for a newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut, the the current. He's he'd really like to talk to you. You know? Would you do that? And so I did, and I talked to him. And he interviewed me on the phone. We had a really, really fascinating conversation that lasted several hours. And so he he wrote an article, and a week or two later, he calls me back. And he says, Chris, I have a strange request. He says, I have a reader who wants to talk to you. Who's that? He says, well, he was a passenger on the Delta that you vectored to miss the United, and he wants to call you and say thank you for saving his life. And so I said, yeah. Give him my number. Let let him call me. So the guy calls me. He turns out he's some sort of circuit court judge up in Connecticut. And, again, fascinating guy. We had a great conversation. He and I talked for hours, and I think that that that conversation with him is what really inoculated me against the effects of PTSD. It was thing it was a kind of a watershed moment for me. He and I were both in tears on the phone. It was it was really special. Did he when he was on the plane, did he sense that was something was going on when they veered to the right? Or Nope. No. Not at all. It was it wasn't until he read the article in the newspaper that he found out he he discovered that he was in an incident with the with, one of the hijacked aircraft. And in those 3 or 4 months before then, did you have some kind of PTSD? So this is also an interesting question for me personally because so I took some time off right away, which, you know, confronted the next day you didn't show off? Yeah. You take traumatic leave. Yeah. I don't know what they call it now, but at the time, that's what it was called. So I planned on taking a few days off. I didn't know how many. I but I I you know, I wasn't there wasn't anything to do anyway. We grounded every aircraft in the country for 3 days. There were no the only airplanes in the sky were jets, military jets. Was that hard, by the way, bringing all the planes down? No. Not for me because I didn't do it. I got up out of my the supervisor asked me if I wanted to get up, and I said, yeah, and I got up out of my chair. So, other controllers were there to do and, yes, it was a a lot of work. A lot of the work involved just convincing the pilots that they had to land. They didn't believe it. You know? But, again, they're required to do what we tell them to do. So, but I, you know, I wasn't there for that. But, anyway, so I took a few days off from work. It ended up being about 2 weeks, and I I I happened to think to myself, you know, it would probably be a good idea for me to go see a shrink. So I went and saw a psychiatrist. Just not knowing why really, just maybe this guy can help. I wasn't suffering too bad. You know, you you nobody nobody in the country, let alone New Yorkers, could get those images out of their head that day, the next day, the next week, the next month. Right? So I saw a psychiatrist, and I spent some time with my family, spent some time with friends. My wife and I went bicycle riding, got out in the open air, and did a lot of exercise. And then so the the 2 weeks are almost I haven't decided when I'm gonna come back to work yet, but it's about 2 weeks later, and I get a phone call from my union rep at the facility. And he says, Chris, there's some guys here that want you to come down and talk to them. Well, who are they? He says, I don't know. I said, well, what do they want? He says, well, they say they're here to help. So, you know, they're from the government, so how could they not be? He's I said, well, who are they? And he he told me who they were, and he said, well, it's it's a critical incident stress management team. They said that they they might be able to help you. I said, I don't know that I need help, but I'll come talk to him. I said, would you would you I I said to him, would you talk to me? He says, no. I wouldn't talk to him. I said, well, I I think I might. I wanna go talk to him. So I went and talked to him. So what it turned out to be was the FAA has a, a team, a response team, a critical incident stress management response team with 4 national coordinators and about 15 members, and all these guys do is respond to situations where controllers have been exposed to, critical incidents. We used to call them traumatic incidents. The the phraseology has changed. And so they are actually other air traffic controllers who get some training. They don't become shrinks, you know, but they get some training in talking to other controllers because controllers like cops, firemen, EMTs don't wanna talk to shrinks, especially if you're a male. You know, it's it's the the whole ego thing. And, you know, so but they might be willing to talk to one of their colleagues, one of their peers. So and that's what the these guys are called. They're called peer counselors. So these guys came to talk to me. So there's 2 or 3 of them, and they had a psychiatrist with them, and I think they had a priest, and I was the only guy that showed up that day. So we're sitting around a big conference table in a conference room, and he says, you know, Chris, I I don't mean to gang up on you. There's a lot of us here. I don't wanna you know, we don't wanna intimidate you, and I don't think that the process the way we normally would do it is gonna work because it's us and you. And, normally, it's a group of of people. He says, so why don't we just talk? Let's just talk about what happened. So I relayed to them the events of that day as I saw them, and then he said, okay. What are you so what are you doing now? What have you been doing for the past couple of weeks? And I told him, I said, I went and I saw a psychiatrist. I went and I got a lot of exercise. I felt like I just needed to move. You know, I went running. I went bicycle riding. Spent a lot of close time with my wife and, my baby daughter at the time. Sorry. My wife was pregnant. Baby daughter wasn't born for a month. And, he says, it's funny that you say that because you it seems like and and and I said, I'm not watching the TV. I haven't seen the TV at all since that day. And he says, it's funny you say that. He says, because you just listed several of the things that we were gonna instruct you to do. Right? And he says, it sounds to me like you're already doing the things that we were gonna help you learn how to do. I really think you should be on this team. So a few months later, they sent me an official invite, and I and I ended up on that team, and I stayed on that team and became a national coordinator. And I was a national coordinator for 10 years. Wow. And I was on that team for the rest of my career when I retired in 2014. So now here we are 18 years later to the day, because I'll pull this out on 911. Right. 18 years later, what are the odds that this can happen again? Like, what are the scenarios? That bother me if I think about it. You know, I think it's I think, that it's far, far, far less likely to occur again. And my main reason for saying that is not because now we have armored c**kpit doors, not because some pilots carry firearms, not because they've received special training in how to deal with hijackers, but because in my mind, passengers, especially American passengers, are not going to let it happen again. Why do you think why do you think they were I think they'd be much because at the time, they didn't know what the hell was happening. You know? I never I never heard of Mike Cratch. Now, we've been you know, we've all had seen what happened on 911, and we all I I know for 1, I would stand up and fight. Yeah. You know? Whereas I'm not that kind of guy that wants to stand up and fight. I'm a very passive pacifistic kind of person. You know? I'm not a pugilist at all. So so but but certainly, the the terrorists or whoever would the hijackers now would have different resources as well. So they could have plastic machine guns that need it through. God only knows what the hell's out there now. So they could just kill all the passengers and then, I don't know, break through the door somehow? But I I just don't think it's nearly as likely. And, also, there are other things happening under the covers that you and I are not aware of. Right? In the airline industry, I know for a fact that there are things happening that we we don't know about. But, like, what like, maybe we don't know exactly, but, like, what's this what within 5 mile perimeter, what sort of thing is that? So there are cameras inside the aircraft now. Right? So the pilots can see what's going on inside the aircraft from the flight deck. I see. So if there's an indication that something's going on, they can do something about it. And there are things that pilots can do if they have enough time to respond. I think the pilots on 911 had no time to respond, and they were just just taken completely unaware. These pilots could they could take could they remove oxygen until everyone passes out? You know, that that is an absolute possibility. Whether that's something that the airlines have thought of, I'm I'm I'm sure somebody's thought of it, but, no, what the the immediate thing that a pilot can do is move the aircraft in such a way that you can't stand up anymore. Mhmm. Right? So they can they can turn the aircraft upside down. They can move it very rapidly vertically up and down, up and down, so the people that are not strapped in are gonna get slammed against the ceiling and against the floor repeatedly. So, yeah. No. Pilots can do things with the aircraft to prevent people from, you know, from walking through the aircraft. And how much more automated is flying? Can can pilots flick a switch and say, okay. This is now on permanent automatic until it lands? Maybe I'm making that up. I mean, that's science fiction. No. There's there's a tremendous amount of automation in in the aircraft right now. And More than that? Absolutely. Even more than that. And, yes, there are there are aircraft that can land themselves. There have been for a long time, actually, aircraft that can land themselves. It's like the space shuttle was able to land itself, I think. Right. So so what can you make it so that once the pilot flicks that switch, he cannot cape take control back without, someone on the ground saying, okay. You can take control back? Well, that's, again, one of those things that I believe is probably happening under the covers. You know? We're not gonna hear about that if, you know, and and it's a dangerous proposition Is it the computer flying the plane, or is it someone on the ground flying the plane then? Well, it's I I think it's a dangerous proposition to to think about having an aircraft that is capable of being taken over by somebody on the ground. Right? Because there's there's a potential risk there, right, of the of that, the link between the aircraft and whoever's controlling it being perpetrated by somebody. But but I could Penetrated. I could all I mean, it could be, sort of a two factor verification. Like Right. Like so I on the plane, I have to first signal first. I wanna be taken over because pilot sees the hijackers in the back, And then it's not the ground initiating it. The pilot's still in control. So so there's another scenario where the hijackers are in control and the ground takes over, so that's most more dangerous. I think it's a very reasonable assumption to believe that there are people out there who are working on solutions like that, and and and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if that if that's out there, and and if it's already installed in airplanes. On a smaller level, you know And there are also I'm sorry. Real quick. There are also you could also make it so that the aircraft itself says, listen. I don't like what you're doing with the airplane. I'm not gonna listen to you anymore. So the aircraft can disconnect itself from inputs from the controls you know, from the control column, and the aircraft might have some mode or, you know, you could create a situation technologically where the aircraft says, we're done. I'm gonna go land the plane somewhere safe. Right? You know? And and not let the pilots have any more input whatsoever into into the flight of the aircraft. So given that there's so many technological solutions and there's marshals on the planes, why do you think we have such a a backlog in the airports with the TSA and, oh, I gotta take my shoes off? And and I'm not complaining if this is truly saving lives, but is it, or is it or is it just reactive? Like, someone has a bomb in their shoes, so now we have to take their shoes off? I don't know. I I think some of it's definitely reactive, but, I mean, it's where would you say 18 laters now? It's 18 years later now. So Oh, was was the incident in Queens in September, a little a month or 2 later? Right. American 57 that crashed in Far Rockaway. Was that a hijack? No. Absolutely not. Okay. Definitely not. No. No. It was a combination of really poor, aircraft design and training. So the the vertical stabilizer separated from the aircraft because the pilots, the pilot who was flying the aircraft at the time moved the rudder full extension to one side, then the other, and back to the other side. So he was basically whipping the tail around like a like a whip, and it and it flipped the vertical stabilizer right off the aircraft. Why was he doing that? Because they encountered the wake turbulence behind a 7 I wanna say a 747, another very heavy aircraft in front of them, and, and he was I I'm not sure why he moved the rudder pedals full travel, you know, all the way to the left and then all the way to the right and then back again. But there are actually rudder travel limits on most airplanes at certain speeds. You can't move the rudder a certain amount of high speeds. You don't want the rudder to be able to move very much at all. Right? If you move it too much, you can do very bad things to the airplane, like like lose the tail. Why the rudder limitations weren't in place, I don't know. Maybe they didn't need to be at those speeds, but so so but it was definitely not a hijack in my mind. Absolutely not. On a smaller level, you know, we have companies like Uber now talking about, you know, flying cars and, you know, going from one building to another. Potentially extremely complicated. Yeah. Because how do you, a, how do you do the air traffic control for that? Right. B, can you really take off from the tops of buildings and, you know Well, I mean, Pan Am used to do it from the building on top of the Grand Central. Yeah. For helicopter or what? Yeah. You used to have helicopters that took off from the top of the building and and flew to Kennedy, or the marine air terminal at LaGuardia. But now these are, like, you they're gonna, like, smaller planes Yeah. To just get you around town. So, like, how is how is everything gonna have to be top of that? They're gonna have to be regulated in exactly the way that helicopters are regulated now. And So you're to land in a heliport, you know, an established place. But the risk for terrorism there too is is pretty big. Like It is. The more people you put in the air, it seems like the more It is. But, again, it's the smaller the vehicle, the less damage it's capable of doing. You know? You're not you're not dealing with a weapon of mass destruction if you crash a helicopter like you are if you crash an airliner. At least that's the way I see it. So well, you know, Chris Tucker, you know, a, first, thanks for everything you did on on that day. You've you've saved lives. You had to deal with a lot that that many people didn't have to deal with. And what do you work on now? Your your your work with the FAA So I retired from the FAA, with 25 years in as a controller in 2014, went into the financial industry with a mutual friend, and it turned out to not work out for me. I I was I I wanted to become a trader, a financials trader, trading futures, and, it's bizarre because as an air traffic controller, which is a very stressful, like we already discussed, job, I was I was pretty good at it. I wasn't the best, but I wasn't the worst either. I was pretty good at it. But I was very confident of my ability when I was working, and I could be there are time it sounds odd to hear a safety professional talk about being aggressive, but I could be a very aggressive controller, and I was very confident. But as a trader, I was timid as heck and and, not capable of making rational decisions once I had a large position on. It's hard. And so I don't think anybody really Yeah. I didn't. I I wasn't good at it. So then I went, I left that field in 2015. I gave it a year. The wife and I had an agreement. If it if it doesn't work out after a year, the fallback is I go get a job as an instructor teaching air traffic control at the facility that I used to work at, so that's what I did. 2015, I went back to New York Center as an instructor, and I worked as an instructor there for, I wanna say, a year and a half, and then, somebody mentioned to me the possibility of working on the software that air traffic controllers use at the FAA's technical center in Atlantic City. So I got a job doing that, and the reason I took it is because it paid 3 times more what I was making. And it's fascinating. I I work as a software tester now. I test the software that air traffic controllers use before they get it. We're installing new stuff. So there's a a new thing in air traffic control called Datacom where the controllers can actually text the aircraft. And so it it eliminates the 19 forties technology that we're still using today to talk to airplanes on a radio. Right? If you have a lot of airplanes on a frequency and you're very busy, they all start talking at the same time. You can't hear what's being said, and nothing gets done. It's a dangerous thing. So Datacom is gonna eliminate a lot of that, and we can actually send instructions to the pilot without ever speaking to them, and there it reduces a lot of opportunities for errors to happen. Because in in radio in the radio world, if I tell an aircraft American, and it's busy in the radio you know, you and I can hear each other very clearly right now. Right? And the people who are listening to this can probably hear me very clearly, but radio is not like that. It's a little fuzzy sometimes. Sometimes it gets very fuzzy. Sometimes because the bandwidth for that probably was sort of, you know, sort of cartoned off 50 years ago. Right. Right. So it's it's still the same band. It's the same thing with phone calls. And so, you know, if you have a situation where I give an aircraft who has a similar sounding call sign and instruction, and another aircraft who has a call sign that's very similar to that one hears it. He might respond instead of the aircraft I instructed. That happens relatively frequently. You hear misread backs where you instruct the car an aircraft to descend and maintain 11,000. Roger, descend and maintain 10,000. You know, the guy reads back 10 instead of 11. That's a bad thing. You know, I I stopped him at 11 for a reason. There's probably traffic at 10. So those kinds of errors should be basically eliminated with the use of Datacom, so that'll be cool. So I guess final question. Why is the only time I ever want tomato juice when I'm flying on a plane? I have no idea, dude. But I but I hear that from a lot of people. Like, everybody on a plane or and the fact that they even offer tomato juice on a plane, and they they don't offer it anywhere else in the world except when you're flying. What's what's the deal with tomato juice and being at high altitudes? I I can't help you, man. I don't know. And is the air significantly different between 1st class and coach that you're breathing? I don't think so, but I don't know. No. I don't think so. Alright. Well, Chris Tucker, sorry to end with such No. No. Naive questions. So many of these questions I wanted to know. But, again, thank you for everything you did on on 911. It was certainly the most terrifying day of my life, and and hearing your story tells rest of the people I work with will just tell you that I was just doing my job. And that's true. I mean, I I we were just all there doing our jobs. So and the portion that I had to deal with had a relatively happy outcome for a certain small group of people. You know? Horrible day, but it could have been even worse for me Yeah. Than it wasn't. Alright. Well, thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, James. Thanks.
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