I know what that sounds like from the other side—I was in the DFW terminal at 10:30. Every jetway had been run out to its full length, then swung against the side of the terminal as impromptu blast shields. Empty gray chairs faced huge picture windows that showed nothing but gray steel. The ubiquitous "CNN Airport" TVs were all dark. Every concession stand was closed.
One at a time, planes would pull up to the furthest gate in the terminal, a bomb-sniffing dog would make a quick check, then the passengers would get off and make their way to baggage claim or the taxi stand. The only business still functioning was the airport bar, where a dozen people were clustered watching CNN on the satellite TV normally reserved for ESPN. No one was talking anywhere—the terminal was so quiet you could hear that single TV for a half-dozen gates in either direction.
The departure and arrival monitors listed a hundred flights, every last one of them canceled... all but one, with a strange flight number much higher than all the others, that was still scheduled for 1:00 that afternoon. As best I can tell, that flight was intended to take AMR's executives, crash investigators and grief counselors out to NYC, as they would after any crash. But of course even that plane didn't leave the ground.
Wow, no I can't imagine. It must be eerily like the end of the world somehow... Thanks for sharing that.
And the weeks following...
I work where I can view entire horizon outside, and since the early 50s, no matter the time of day, the sky was blue... and empty.
And no sound. Just the occasional bird. It was a feeling not unlke watching a rerun of the Twilight Zone.
Except it was real. And it was now.