I’ve always wondered why the attacks ever got the name “9/11”. Yes, we (the public, and the media) desperately needed a label for the most shocking event of our generation. But couldn’t somebody be a bit more creative?
Pearl Harbor is not known as “7/12”-it’s a “Day that will live in infamy”.
Kennedy’s assassination is not known as “23/11”, it’s “the end of Camelot”
D-day is not called “4/6”–it’s called, well, D-day.
Well, first off, we would have called Pearl Harbor “12/7” what with our American way of writing the dates the other way.
The reason we went with 9/11 is likely because it also coincides with 911, the emergency phone number in the US. It’s one of those nice coincidences where it matches up perfectly and also reminds us of the exact date it all went down.
My son flew from New York City to Paris last 9/11 and said it was a great flight.
I’d probably fly on that date, but would not go out of my way to do it.
One of the random “Gee Whiz” info boxes in my psychology text book points out that, with everyone driving rather than flying after September 11th due to the percieved danger of flying, something like 300+ more people died on the roads in the last three months of 2001 than had in the last three months of 2000, compared to less than 250 airline passengers actually dying in the attacks.
Hell, even on September 11th, 2001, flying on an airliner was safer than going to work. IF someone hijacks an airplane and wants to run it into something, they can get you anywhere (the sky covers a lot of ground). You can live in fear, or you can be reasonable about it and go on with your life. If I had somewhere I needed to get to that was more than 6 or so hours drive away? I’d fly. Even then, driving only becomes a preference for places “only” 6 hours away because airline tickets are expensive for me.
I had no problem flying into DC last year on 9/11. This year my girlfriend has an interview on 9/11, and the company offered to fly her (from Chicago to Detroit), but she opted to drive. She’s a squeamish flyer anyway, so she probably would’ve opted to drive regardless of the date. She did, however, make the comment that she really didn’t feel like getting on a plane on that date.
A nitpick but another reason the Kennedy assassination is not known as 23/11 is that it happened on the 22nd (sorry another thread on this board got me playing JFK reloaded).
An I will be flying to Honolulu on 9/11.
Wouldn’t give it a second thought. I was also flying the night of 9/11 (private/charter flight). I was a little concerned about miscommunications back then. ATC was a tad edgy that night.
That’s OK, I get to live it twice.
I leave Guam at 6 AM on 9/11
leave Honolulu at 9PM 9/10
Arrive in LA at 5 AM 9/11
I think that they have flux capacators on 767s
I’m in Boulder, and am flying home tomorrow. Not very happy about it, but that has less to do with flying than it does with my general feelings about this date.
I could not get a flight out on Sunday evening, so I will be at the airport on Monday morning. I am more annoyed that I can not attend a couple meetings I had planned for Monday morning than anything.
Not sure if you meant April 6th or June 4th, but it’s June 6th anyway.
I always thought D-day was a funny name for that particular event. Every operation’s starting day was a “D-day”. The hour they started was their H-hour, etc. This is so you can say “We need to reach that bridge by D+2” in a relative sense. There’s nothing unique about “D-day” and the landings at Normandy.
Anyway, I remember a bunch of people saying “I’m too scared to ever fly again” the week after 9/11 happened. I wanted to stab all of those hysterical retards in the head with a fork.
I mean - it’s unlikely terrorists will use the same route again, but even if they did, you’d have, what, one chance in several hundred thousand (million?) per year of being affected? Even if you knew the day a hijacking were to occur, you’d have a one in thousands chance of being involved.
But that’s typical of irrational, emotionally motivated people - one highly publicized/striking/anomolous event skews their entire perspective on life.
Well, I survived both flights.
Planes were maybe 75% full (both were 767s) I was lucky enough to have an empty next to me on both legs of the trip.
Nice flights just way long. (about 13 hrs total)
To be fair, I have heard lots and lots of folks refer to the Normandy Landings as “The Normandy Landings” or just “Normandy.” It’s occasionally fun to refer to it as “The day the US invaded France” though.
You’re far more likely to die from a car accident than a plane crash (yay for thousands of people rolling around in vehicles made out of metal and fiberglass with large quantities of highly flammable liquid at unsafe distance and speeds while listening ot the radio, having conversations, etc.). One of the big things is that while you have to go through quite a bit of training and testing before you can fly a plane, you don’t have to do nearly as much to get to drive a car. With PEOPLE in the car, no less! And trust me, if a terrorist wanted to hijack your car and plow it into an office building, it would be SO much easier for him to just smash your window with a brick and hop in at a stoplight than it would be for him to get onto an airliner.
Oh, I agree entirely. I simply hate when people have no sense of perspective whatsoever when it comes to their perspective of danger.
Take Columbine for another instance. One incident in one school out of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of schools. But people after it were “OMG! I’m not sending my kid to school anymore! Ban guns! Spend 80 billion putting medical detectors in school! Start searching through every kid’s backpot!!!” when they ignore the very real, very common dangers in their lives because they’re not as dramatic.
Like me stabbing them in the head with a fork for being so hysterical.