The Day the Planes Stopped Flying

I have lived in Denver for decades. I have a need to be close to the airport, so I can watch the airplanes depart and land. There is something magical about it for me. When I see airplanes in the sky, whether day or night, I feel comforted. Home. That’s what they represent to me.

Years ago, when we first moved to our neighborhood, Stapleton Airport existed. We had lived in Boulder previously and when I told people we were moving to Denver, close to the airport, they scoffed, saying I would regret it due to all that airplane noise.

There has never been any of that. And if there has been, I haven’t noticed because I love seeing the planes come and go. In fact, just today my husband said they must be flying a different route because they were louder than normal. I smiled, knowing I was in the process of finishing this essay.

One early evening, when I still worked in Boulder, but we had moved to Denver, I was making my way home on I-70 and felt a little lost, like I was caught in-between two worlds. Then I looked up and saw airplanes, making their way to Stapleton. Something came over me and I felt peace and contentment. These feelings have remained with me ever since, when I see airplanes in the sky.

We didn’t live in Denver long before Denver International Airport was built. If Stapleton had been busy, DIA was an entirely different ballgame and would put Denver on the map, from a travel standpoint. According to Google, it’s the fourth busiest airport in the United States and the tenth busiest in the world. And growing.

Recently we moved a few miles from where we had lived. Our new home is even closer to DIA, a delight to me because I fly at least twice a month. From our front porch, we watch the planes make their way over the Rockies and, from our back, we see our babies returning home.

To me, the airplanes are like birds that leave the nest, then come back, then fly off again. A beautiful, constant revolving door of colors and sounds, artfully decorating the sky.

Not only do I have an attachment to airplanes, but I also have a love for aviation in general, as I worked for, and retired from, Frontier Airlines. My last role at Frontier included training ticket counter and gate agents and my favorite day of the two-week new employee training was on the job at DIA. It was a blast spending the day there, watching the new hires learn the ropes from seasoned peers. Just being there was a rush like nothing else.

Since 1991, the two Denver airports and the airplanes have been a staple in my daily life.

Until September 11, 2001, the day the planes stopped flying.

I remember the day vividly, as almost everyone does. I had three young kids and was a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. For whatever reason, I turned the tv on that morning before we started the day and was shocked to see what was evolving. None of us had any idea what was happening at the time, but after a few hours we had a good idea.

For me, watching two airplanes fly into buildings was traumatizing on a totally different level. Though I hadn’t started my career at Frontier Airlines yet, I took this personally. I think all Americans did.

At the time, I was part of a homeschool group at my church and we went on a field trip to a farm the day after 9/11. I remember gazing at the sky and realizing there were no planes up there. That’s when the impact of the tragedy finally hit me. I mentioned something about this to our group, and we all just stood at the farm, silently looking up. Most of us lived close to DIA so we had all grown accustomed to the busy activity in the sky.

It was devastating and eerie and profoundly sad.

Fast forward a few years…When I began my career at Frontier, I started out as a reservations agent. During our four-week training, Crystal, our trainer, told us a story to calm our fragile nerves when the tests we had to take became too much or we had to get on the phones for the first time and take a test call.

When we started to become unglued, she said, “Look up at sky. Are the planes still flying? Then all is good.”

In other words, we may not ace every test or perfect every phone call, but when mistakes happened, they would not affect the ability of the planes to stay in the sky. Thank goodness! This helped all of us keep perspective and I never forgot what she said.

In fact, when I became a trainer at Frontier, I said the same thing to my students, one in particular. Annie was the sweetest, most caring person and I knew she would make an excellent ticket counter/gate agent. But she struggled on the final test, failing it. I went to bat for her, talked to my manager, and she was allowed to graduate with everyone else.

I had learned that sometimes the people who struggle the most are the ones who care the most. In over fourteen years of training in three different industries, this theory still rings true.

On graduation day, after all the pomp and circumstance, I was sitting at my desk, finishing up on post-graduation tasks. Annie came in and said goodbye to me, then she headed out the door. Before she left, she stood in the doorway, tears in her eyes, and said, “I will look up. I will see the planes are still in the sky. Everything will be okay.”

I lost it. Even now, years later, I remember the look on her face, the resolve, the tears, and I remember exactly how it made me feel.

Back to 9/11. I was scheduled to take a trip of a lifetime to Greece a little over a week afterwards. Part of me was praying it would be canceled, but when it wasn’t, I struggled with whether I should go or not. I decided to go, as did my friend who was traveling with me.

We had a layover in New York for one night before traveling on to Athens. We got as close as we could to ground zero and then we were turned away. The smoke was thick and evil filled the air. Memorials were everywhere, with pictures of those who had died or who were missing. Hundreds of pictures.

It was the most somber of somber scenes. I will never forget it. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the grief, the oppression, I felt. I carried it with me to Greece and back, on flights that were as empty as I have ever seen them.

I will also never, ever forget the day the planes stopped flying.

Photo by Victoria Prymak on Unsplash