9/11 and its aftermath

 

Twenty years ago, I struggled to absorb the images of fire and smoke wafting from the World Trade Center.

I turned the TV on when the second plane was ready to hit the tower.  I thought it was a movie.

When I later saw the beams twisted and in rubble, it was eerie, very eerie!

It is still hard to process what happened but the melancholy and pain of that day have been replaced by hope as we see the One World Trade Center tower and adjacent buildings in lower Manhattan.

So, what has happened in the interim?  The masterminds behind the attack are incarcerated, and Osama bin Laden was killed.  The Taliban that provided a safe haven to OBL were overthrown but they are again back in charge.  Nearly 3000 people lost their lives in that horrible day and thousand upon thousand more in the wars that followed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other Arab countries.  And the wars ended but the pain and confusion still persist for millions of people. 

The story America told itself in the aftermath was one of resilience but the grief is still alive in our hearts and tears are rushing down when the brutal events of that day and those that followed come to our minds.

A Sad Day for World's Aviation

Flight MH370 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard, went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.  It is presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast.  Search and rescue operations were initiated by many nations.  Vietnamese pilots report two large oil slicks in the region of the presumed crash.  I am writing this post as a memorial to those who perished and to express my sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones.

The deadliest aviation-related disaster of any kind, considering fatalities on both airplanes and on the ground, was the destruction of World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  On that morning two hijacked airplanes crashed into the towers destroying and killing 2,752, the vast majority of them occupants and or emergency personnel responding to the disaster. In addition, 184 were killed on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon and 40 were killed on the fourth hijacked plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.   The total number of fatalities that day was 2,977.

The collision between two 747 airplanes that occurred on March 27, 1977 on the runway of Tenerife North Airport, on Tenerife, one of the Canary islands caused 583 fatalities, and is the deadliest accident in aviation history. 

The following is partial list of major air-disasters of the last 30 years.

The crash of Japan Airlines 123, on August 12, 1985 due to an explosive decompression made the 747 uncontrollable and caused the demise of 520 passengers, which is the highest number of fatalities in a single aircraft accident

On 25 July 2000, Air France 4590, a Concorde flight, crashed, resulting in the death of 109 people on board, as well as 4 people on the ground. Although Concorde had a very good safety record, this event was the beginning of the end for supersonic plane.  

On 31 October 1999, Egypt Air 990, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people on board. The National Transportation Safety Board report concluded the First Officer intentionally dove the aircraft into the ocean.

On 12 November 1996, a mid-air collision between Saudia 763 and Air Kazakhstan 1907 was the result of the Kazakh pilot flying lower than the assigned altitude. All 349 passengers and crew on board the two aircraft died.

On 17 July 1996, TWA 880, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board. 

In Greek mythology, Icarus (Ancient Greek: Ικαρος) is the son of Daedalus, a talented Athenian craftsman, who built the Labyrinth for King Minos to house the Minotaur.   While father and son attempted to escape Crete with feathers attached to their arms, Icarus ignored his father instructions not to fly too close to the sun that caused melting of the wax and made him to fall into the sea and drown.  The nearby island, Ikaria and the sea were named after him.  Icarus is the first man who flew and the first air fatality.