Smoke continues to billow from the remains of the World Trade Center as Continental Express planes sit at the closed Newark, New Jersey Airport 12 September 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. One of the hijacked planes departed the Newark Airport and later crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Tannen Maury | AFP | Getty Images
More than a fifth of the U.S. population is too young to remember what air travel was like before Sept. 11, 2001.
Passengers’ loved ones used to be able to greet and bid them farewell at the gate. Travelers weren’t required to take off their shoes and belts or remove liquids from carry-on luggage before going through checkpoints, let alone wait in long security lines. It was years before airlines charged passengers to check their bags or select a seat, though average domestic fares are cheaper today.
The entire industry, from airport security to flight attendant training to even the number of airlines in existence, was reshaped by the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history. That clear, blue morning in late summer, 19 hijackers turned four Boeing jetliners — two American Airlines and two United Airlines planes —into missiles. They crashed two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in a field in southern Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attack.
Cars sit outside Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), which is closed because of the air attacks on New York and Washington, DC, September 11, 2001, in Los Angeles, CA.
David McNew | Getty Images
Industry shock
Commercial flights were halted for several days. Airline executives pondered the industry’s future.
“We immediately grounded all our airplanes,” said David Neeleman, founder and then-CEO of JetBlue Airways, at that point a new carrier that debuted 19 months before 9/11. “We had planes landing in the Carolinas, Kansas. Our CFO was at the printer. He was proofing the prospectus for our IPO.”
Cancelled flights are displayed on monitors at the Los Angeles Airport terminal September 10, 2001 in Los Angeles, CA.
Jason Kirk | Getty Images
Watching the events unfold, “I started thinking: Why would anybody want to travel again with this going on?”
Global passenger traffic recovered but it took two years, as travelers were reluctant to fly and business travel demand plunged because of the attacks and a recession.
U.S. airlines lost $8 billion in 2001. The industry wasn’t profitable again until 2006. Losses topped $60 billion over that five-year period and airlines again lost money in 2008 during the Great Recession. Job cuts in the wake of 9/11 were in the tens of thousands and workers faced massive pay cuts. Only the Covid pandemic has threatened more jobs but a record $54 billion federal bailout prohibited airlines from laying off staff.
Stranded travelers wait in the United Airlines terminal at O”Hare International Airport September 11, 2001 in Chicago, Illinois.
Tim Boyle | Getty Images
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Read More: How 9/11 forever changed air travel