Dormont Councilwoman Hodson Recalls 9/11 As Flight Attendant

Councilwoman Joan Hodson was a US Airways flight attendant aboard a Tampa-bound jet from Pittsburgh when she learned of the terrorist attacks.

While it wasn’t until her jet was nearly on the ground that she found out terrorists had turned planes into missiles, she can’t help but think at times that her plane could have been one.

“We were lucky,” she said. “Some days I can talk about it and some days I can’t.”

“I can put myself in the place in of those flight attendants who were tied up and hit and cut up with box cutters,” she said in an August interview.

As with so many other people, Sept. 11, 2001, became a turning point in Hodson’s life. The aftermath would cut short a new career, but it would also bring into focus what was important to her.

Hodson, 55, had been a flight attendant for about a year and was finishing serving breakfast to first-class passengers. With four meals left to serve, she was summoned to the cabin.

The captain directed her attention to the communication that had just come across the screen: A plane had crashed into the WTC.

WTC? Was it an airport code she was unfamiliar with?

World Trade Center, the captain said.

It was probably near 10 a.m. Planes would have already hit both towers and the Pentagon.

They were under orders to land at the nearest airport, which was Charlotte, N.C.

She and the three other crew members had 15 minutes to clear breakfast and prepare 180 passengers for an emergency landing.

When they returned to the cabin, the captain told them Charlotte, was full. They would have to land in Greensboro, N.C.

They were instructed not to tell passengers why they were making an emergency landing, other than that the plane was safe, she recalled.

At that point, Hodson said she didn’t know what had happened and had presumed it was an accident.

But as the plane was descending, a first-class passenger pulled out his cell phone. He had gotten the news.

“He was on an aisle seat on the right. He turns around and is screaming to the passengers, “Two aircraft have hit the World Trade Center. We are under attack,’” she recalled.

Hodson threatened to have him arrested if he didn’t keep quiet.

For all anyone knew at that point, the crash could have been an accident, she said. “He could have created a riot on that airplane.”

She stood by him while the plane was landing to insure he didn’t use his phone.

Once on the ground, passengers began checking their phones, but all the lines were by then jammed, she said.

After the passengers deplaned, Hodson and the crew went into the plane’s crew lounge and turned on the TV: Footage of the planes hitting the towers. News of a plane hitting the Pentagon and United Flight 93’s crash near Shanksville. Reports of missing planes.

“Of course, we all have friends who work for other airlines,” she said. They tried to determine if US Airways planes were involved or missing.

“And then it just clicked, that I don’t know what’s going on in Pittsburgh or with my family,” she said.

She tried calling her husband and parents, but there was no service.

After some time had passed, her daughter Mallory, then a Keystone Oaks sophomore, called.

“She said ‘Mom, I just had to know you were OK,’” Hodson recalled. “I had this huge lump in my throat and I couldn’t even speak to her. That’s when my knees started to shake. We handled this emergency, but we did not even realize what it was until we went down into that crew lounge and saw it on TV.”

Hodson felt terrible realizing that it took some time before she thought to check on her family, but said she was doing her job.

It wasn’t her first emergency landing, but there were numerous tasks that required absolute focus, she said.

She had trained on 12 types of aircraft with various crew sizes and different safety procedures.

“Everything is geared to safety, so you had to know your duties on each different type of plane,” she said.

 “You don’t even think about it. You just do it,” she said.

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Hodson would make her last flight as a US Airways attendant that Halloween. Like many others in the spiraling airline industry, she was laid off.

She’d only been a flight attendant for a year when the attacks happened. She had thought she found her dream job, traveling the world and working with people she liked.

“Because I lost my job, I was considered a victim of 9/11 and the Salvation Army offered to pay our bills. So for one month, they paid all my utility bills and my car payments,” she said. “So, I’m a very big supporter of theirs.”

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Hodson said she plans to travel to Shanksville for this year’s anniversary. She’s never been there, figuring she’d wait until the Flight 93 National Memorial was completed.

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Hodson said 9/11 was a turning point in her life.

Up until then, she’d brush off her father’s war stories with an “Oh, dad. …”

Not anymore.

“I kind of look at 9/11 as … we were attacked. That is my world war, I guess. It helped set my priorities of what’s important,” she said. “God and family is number one to me. And I just don’t sweat the small stuff.”