Remembering 9/11: Retired Pilot Recalls Flying that Day

It was the last day of a four-day trip for Northwest pilot Capt. Buzz Allsup.

The skies were blue and clear over most of the United States. It was a great day to be flying ... that is, until 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

A few minutes later, Allsup was preparing to leave Las Vegas headed to Detroit with a full plane: 150 passengers, and five on-board crewmembers. It was a grounds crewmember that first told him that a plane had crashed into the tower.

Neither Allsup nor anyone else knew anything more. So when he was cleared to “push-back” from the gate, Allsup took off. 

About 20 minutes into the flight he received a text message from an on-board message center: Two airliners had crashed into the Word Trade Center. A few minutes later, a second message: The Pentagon had been bombed. 

Allsup remembers looking at his first officer and saying, “This is not good, there is something really terrible going on down there.”

Then another text message: A United Airliner has crashed in Pennsylvania.

“Instinctively, I knew we wouldn’t finish the flight,” recalls Allsup, who now lives in Land O' Lakes. “So I called for the first flight attendant, who was a rather large man. I told him, ‘No one gets through the cockpit door. You have permission to use deadly force to prevent anyone to come through that door.' " 

In 2001, the cockpit doors were made similar to the lavatory doors in airplanes, and the only weapons on board were a crash-axe and fire extinguishers. 

Shortly after, air traffic control contacted Allsup and instructed him to land the plane. He chose Salt Lake City, and landed the plane without incident.  

It wasn’t until they got into the Salt Lake City airport that the crew and passengers fully understood what had happened. 

“It was worse than we thought," Allsup said. "We sat around the terminal for two hours watching television and trying to find a hotel."

For the next three days, Allsup and his crew were stranded in Salt Lake City, waiting for clearance to take the plane to Northwest’s main terminal in Minneapolis. Finally they received clearance to fly the plane with the crew only. 

“It was surreal as we landed in Minneapolis to see all the planes parked wing-to-wing next to each other,” Allsup recalls. 

With the plane safely in Minneapolis, Allsup had to find his way home to Fort Walton Beach, and to his wife, Jaynie. It was the first time that national airspace had been shut down, and he and everyone else who had been stranded were trying to just get home.

It was three weeks before he flew again. 

“I don’t remember anything remarkable happening other than heighten security and new training programs were being implemented," he said.

Later in October 2001, he flew into New York through La Guardia. Just before landing the plane he remembers flying over Manhattan and the footprint of where the towers once stood. It was still smoldering.

“As pilots we were trained to acquiesce to hijackers. We were trained to protect the passengers and the plane. In hindsight, that seems pretty stupid,” he says with a sigh. 

After 10 years, the events of that day are still fairly clear for Allsup.  The sadness he feels is for the lives that were lost that day, but also for all the mistakes and circumstances that allowed the terrorists to be successful. Things such as screening, security and even the beautiful weather contributed to the horrible outcome.

On Sept. 1, 2011, Allsup retired after 33 years of service. He has clocked more than 30,000 flying hours, nationally and internationally, and has piloted everything from DC9s to 747s. 

His last flight was from Milan, Italy, to, ironically, New York.