The events of the eleventh of September affected all of us deeply. The Pilot's Lounge at the virtual airport became jammed that day and has remained so with pilots who have come together and try to sort out the myriad emotions that each felt. The attacks, the subsequent groundings and then the national suspicion of pilots shocked each of us. It helped to get together and talk. The older pilots provided a degree of stability and direction to the younger generation as the younger group struggled with a loss of innocence similar to that their parents or grandparents had had in the First or Second World War. I listened to the older pilots. Hearing of their experiences with the rampant paranoia at the beginning of our country's involvement in each of those wars was strangely reassuring. When they recalled that the government had pulled the props off of general aviation airplanes to ground them following the Pearl Harbor attack, it helped me understand that the current panic and subsequent overreaction leading to the grounding of little airplanes is nothing new in history and that maybe cooler, calmer heads will eventually prevail.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/the-pilots-lounge-40of-pilots-drivers-and-the-wtc