I never thought I would live to see the day that all civil aviation in this country was grounded. But it happened on September 11. It was spooky as my wife, Stancie, and I walked our dogs in the early evening in the Connecticut suburbs just northeast of New York City. Normally the air is filled with airplanes of all types, at all altitudes, coming and going in the world’s most complex airspace. The airplanes are not an annoyance to us or our neighbors. They are just there, like the trees and the babble of the Five Mile River at the end of our street.
But the silence of the missing airplanes screamed a call to arms for all pilots. Just as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring ignited the modern environmental movement in the early 1960s, the aviation silence brought on by the terror attacks on New York and Washington has propelled pilots into action to help protect our country, and the greatest aviation system in the world.
