When it became apparent that airplanes were being hijacked my husband turn on our aviation-band scanner shortly before the “everybody land” order came.
I should mention that we normally scan on the general aviation frequencies, since that’s the sort of flying we do.
Anyhow, he said it was broadcast on pretty much all frequencies over a period of a very few minutes that there was a “national emergency” and every one was to land IMMEDIATELY at the nearest airport.
He did mention that one or two pilots questioned this - remember, these guys were up in the air, flying VFR and not expecting to hear from a controller, and were mostly confused. The order was repeated a couple more times, and clarified that this applied to everybody and would be enforced by the Air Force.
He said after that it was busy, but very much business as usual.
I do find it sad that no mention has been made of the pilots who landed at the non-towered airports. Non-towered airports do not have air traffic controllers, and certainly the controllers were too busy to lend any aid to these airports. Pilots landing at such fields were responsible for their own traffic control - as is always the case - but the traffic was much, much busier than usual.
Please note - there was not a single injury involved in this massive, unprecedented, and unforeseen operation.
Really, it was a group effort of air traffic control, the pilots, and the ground crews, who had to shuffle planes around so those that landed had someplace to go once off the runway.
Sorting things out afterwards took some doing as well. For instance, at my home field there were several business jets grounded because they ran out of their supply of jet fuel, there were so many unexpected landing there. That sort of thing played out over and over across the country.
