Ep. - 1714 - CAPTAIN CHARLIE PETERSON: ONE PILOT’S UNTOLD 9/11 STORY

Reality Life with Kate Casey

Retired United Airlines Captain Charlie Peterson recounts his untold story from September 11, 2001—volunteering to fly a Boeing 727 carrying

Key takeaways

• Captain Peterson flew a critical mission to the Flight 93 crash site shortly after 9/11, despite no prior knowledge of being monitored by military forces.

Main topics

• September 11, 2001 emergency response operations
• Pilot professionalism under extreme stress

Notable quotes

"It was in his mind, simply the job he trained for." — On why Peterson volunteered despite personal risk.

Conclusion

Charlie Peterson's story offers a rare, intimate look at the quiet courage

Transcript preview

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It includes six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is three times the amount of dietary fiber compared to the leading greens powders and more than two cups of broccoli. And the Groons ingredients have gut health, beauty, energy, immunity, recovery, and cognition benefits. Groons ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. I've been taking my Groons for 20 days, and this is why I love them. You can save up to 61 % off with free gifts with code KateCasey at Groons.co. That's G-R-U-N-S dot co. Speaker 2 (1:34) Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with KKC. 25 years ago today, ordinary people were suddenly confronted with circumstances for which no manual had been written. Speaker 1 (1:47) This Speaker 2 (1:48) is Speaker 1 (1:48) the Speaker 2 (1:48) story of Speaker 1 (1:49) one of them. Speaker 2 (1:52) Charlie Peterson and his wife Donna met while both worked in aviation, he as a United Airlines pilot, she as a United Flight attendant. It was a second marriage for each and a fresh start Speaker 1 (2:04) for a Speaker 2 (2:05) blended family of four children. They married on April 11, 2001. Five months later, that new life collided with one of the most consequential mornings in American history. On September 10th, Charlie was scheduled to fly to New York with Donna along to celebrate their anniversary. Storm delays scrambled the plan, and the couple ended up spending the night at the Hilton near Chicago's O'Hare instead. The next morning, Donna turned on the television looking for flight information. She found news coverage of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. By the time Charlie was ready to leave the room, a second plane had struck. They went straight to United's Flight Operations Center under the terminal. As the day unfolded, the Pentagon attacked Flight 93 down in Pennsylvania. The FAA grounded every aircraft in American airspace. Airports went silent. United still needed to get its emergency response team, employees trained to support crash investigations and assist victims' families, to the site near Shanksville. The team was in Chicago. Almost nothing was flying. United secured rare authorization to send a Boeing 727, chosen partly because its rear staircase let passengers disembark without ground equipment. United's assistant chief pilot found Charlie in flight operations and asked if he'd take the assignment. Charlie said yes, then crossed the terminal to tell Donna he'd be flying toward the site where one of his airline's planes had just gone down. She asked him not to go. He went anyway. It was in his mind, simply the job he trained for. The loss was personal too. Charlie had been hired alongside Jason Dahl, the captain of Flight 93, and knew two of the flight's first officers from having flown with them before. There was no time to sit with any of that. He briefed his frightened crew, promised they'd land safely, and come home, then diffused the moment with a deadpan joke about his new marriage and an ex-wife he didn't want collecting his life insurance. The Speaker 1 (4:16) room laughed. Speaker 2 (4:18) What Charlie didn't know when he agreed to fly and what he'd only find out in the cockpit is that his own plane was being watched with the same suspicion as everything else in the sky that day. This is a most special conversation. And I have to tell you, Charlie shares with me something that in 10 years on this podcast and 25 years reading through coverage of 9-11, I had never heard before. This is my conversation with retired United Airlines captain, Charlie Peterson. Speaker 2 (4:51) Well, Charlie, it is a pleasure to meet you. I actually was introduced to you through your wife. So it's Speaker 1 (4:57) a Speaker 2 (4:57) pleasure. Speaker 1 (4:58) It's my pleasure, too. I'm glad to put a face to the voice of the podcast. Speaker 2 (5:05) What is your earliest memory of wanting to be a pilot? Speaker 1 (5:08) I remember wanting to be a pilot before I remember anything else. Speaker 2 (5:13) Really? Speaker 1 (5:14) I grew up, my dad was a pilot with United. He was Navy and then went to United. And I grew up in what everyone jokingly referred to as an airline ghetto. About every fourth or fifth house had an airline pilot in it just because it was conveniently located to get on I-90 to go to O'Hare in Chicago. Speaker 2 (5:32) And so Speaker 1 (5:33) a lot of pilots lived around there. And I didn't realize until late grade school, early junior high, that everybody didn't grow up learning how to fly. I thought everyone flew. So I always wanted to do it. And then I started doing it in high school. Speaker 2 (5:49) You, right around September 11th, you got married to Donna. Speaker 1 (5:54) April of 2001. Second marriage for both of us. Speaker 2 (5:58) What day in April? Speaker 1 (6:00) April 11th. Speaker 2 (6:01) OK. Speaker 1 (6:02) And we she she's got to put this in there for the sake of my marriage. Six years younger than me. So she's much younger than me. She went on the trip with me and we were to have laid over September 10th in New York City. And she was going with me. I remember that day because first off, there was storms and. Speaker 1 (6:34) Also back then, I know I'm getting off track here, but just for what led into it, the air traffic control system, the computers, the radar, and all that, they were in desperate need of being updated. The controllers were fantastic, but they had limited equipment. And they've changed the rules since so they can have more. Speaker 1 (6:59) Highways in the sky is the easiest way to put it for airplanes. But you get a thunderstorm. It's just like summer construction. A road gets blocked. The others get filled up. They had thunderstorms in Ohio. So they were having to reroute it. So people were getting delays. And then if I recall right, there was a further delay because a wastebasket. Speaker 1 (7:25) Apparently had a cigarette dropped in it at Cleveland Center and caught on fire. So they had to evacuate Cleveland Center. So that added another delay. And the economy was changing a little. So we didn't have full airplanes. And in a logical choice, United decided to combine two flights because this time they were so backed up. And they gave the other flight our slot. We were supposed to go in front of them, but we were running out of crew duty. So they gave the other crew our slot, put all the passengers on it. and flew to New York. And as a result, I am in Chicago. Since we had work the next day, we had to go to St. We're supposed to go to St. Louis and back. United put us up at the airport Hilton. So Donna just stayed with me. We didn't have kids to go to. So we went out, had dinner that night. And, you know, my crew went along, my engineer, my co-pilot. And then we went to bed, got up the next day, started getting ready. And Donna was going to head home. And I was going to go to St. Louis and back and then go home. Well, she turned on the TV. The O'Hare Hilton, they have channels with the gates on it. She was just going to let me know what gate I was going to. And all of a sudden, everything changed to canceled. Speaker 1 (8:40) She looked at Americans. Canceled. Everybody's. Canceled. So she turned on the news. And I don't recall exactly, but I know the first plane had hit the towers. I don't know. I can't remember. By the time I got out of the room, the second plane definitely had hit the towers. Something's going on. So I called my engineer and my co-pilot. Neither one of them lived in Chicago. They were commuters. And told them not to check out. Stay in their rooms. Two reasons for that. One, rooms are going to be at a premium really fast if everything canceled and people needed places to stay. And two, at that time, United was paying for it, not them. So they had a room if we didn't go anywhere. And they could deal with it from there. So Don and I went over to operations. Speaker 1 (9:38) And when we got down, the operations is below sea concourse in United's terminal in O'Hare. You go down the hall, flight attendant in flight is on one side, pilots operations is on the other. She ran into one of her classmates. Speaker 1 (9:58) And they started talking. So she went into in-flight and I went into operations. At that point, around then is when the American hit the Pentagon. So we know something's up. And we're still all scrambling for details, but it's what do we do? So what can we do? Pilots are a very focused group. And it's like, all right. There are things that need to be done. What can we do at this time? We have the checklist, what we go through and all that. Well, one thing we do know that was going to happen and we could happen is, like I said, with my crew, we have a lot of pilots and crew in Chicago, whether they were based in Chicago and flew in to work or they were at other, they were a Denver pilot that was in Chicago. Rooms were going to. run out really fast. So we started organizing lists of the people who live there, who could host, how many you could host until this was over. About somewhere during that time, we got word that our flight crashed at, I think, Johnstown because I landed at the Johnstown airport, but Shanksville. Speaker 1 (11:22) So now we're really wondering what's going on. More planes going down. And like I said, everything else was grounded. The only planes that were up in the air were the ones that had taken off before all this. The airlines have emergency response teams that they send to crash sites. Every domicile has one. So, you know, there's one in Washington, D.C. for United, and there's one in Chicago for United, one in Denver for, you know, all the domiciles have one. And what they are is... Speaker 1 (11:56) At that time, approximately 80 people. They get a little extra training and extra pay for being on the response team. But, you know, one of the things is if there's a crash, you got to go to the site. What their purpose is, is to assist in whatever is needed, whether it be the NTSB and the investigation, fire and rescue, FAA, whatever help they need. United has information on its airplane that isn't readily available. So they go, they take some computers. And at that time, that was quite a big task because there weren't laptops. And they go and they're there to help. So we had to get our team from Chicago to Shanksville. Speaker 1 (12:59) The way I found out about this is I was walking through operations and I happened to meet near the chief pilot's office. Our chief pilot was not there that day. The assistant chief pilot, Captain Bob Jordan, was. Bob and I were hired together. And he had been a commuter for a while coming from Des Moines, which is where I would go to fly in the reserves. So we knew each other going back and forth from there. And we knew each other for our entire careers. And he sees me and he says, is your crew here? I go, no. All right, stand by. I go, okay. And there was another 727 crew there, a complete crew, the captain, co-pilot, and engineer. And Bob looks at the captain and says, we have permission for United Airlines 727 to fly from Chicago to Johnstown Airport to take our emergency response team to that crash site. Speaker 1 (14:02) You'll eventually come back. I just don't know if it's going to be today or not. Can you do it? And I am by no means disparaging this captain because he had questions. And he goes, I have some issues that need to be addressed before I agree to do this. Speaker 2 (14:20) What were they? What were their issues? I never got to them. Speaker 1 (14:23) Never found out what they were because what Bob then did is he looked at me and goes, I don't have time for this. I got to get this put together. He looks at me, Charlie, will you go? Okay. Yeah. Okay, good. Here's your co-pilot, your new co-pilot, your new engineer. Talk to them. Let me find out what information I have for you. Speaker 2 (14:44) I Speaker 1 (14:44) go, okay, I'll be right back. I got to go tell my wife. I'm flying. So I went over to the in-flight side. I saw her across the room and I just pointed, I went like that and Speaker 2 (14:57) like Speaker 1 (14:58) that and turned around and walked out. Her friend looked at her and goes, oh, you go when he does that? She laughed. It goes, when he does it like that, yeah, because he's not like that. Speaker 2 (15:08) Right. Speaker 1 (15:09) So she came out. We met in the hall. I told her what was going on. She goes, well, you're not going, are you? I go, yeah. Speaker 2 (15:16) You Speaker 1 (15:16) don't have to go. Yeah, I do. No, you don't have to go. Yeah, I do. You don't have to, but you're going. OK, we can settle on that. I'm going. Speaker 1 (15:28) And so now she comes with me into in-flight, or I mean into operations. And about that time, Bob, we got an airplane. It's up at whatever gate it was, C20. And the FAA wants to inspect it. Now, some of the things that I'm going to tell you, Speaker 2 (15:47) in Speaker 1 (15:50) hindsight, seem like why or irrelevant or anything like that. But what you have to remember. is our view of hijackings up until that morning where they take over the plane, they make you land, they use it as a bargaining chip. They negotiate for money, for whatever. Everyone's seen the movies. Everyone's seen the hijackings. That's what they do. How Speaker 2 (16:26) much training do you get at this point? So pre-9-11, how much does hijacking ever even come up throughout the duration of filming? Speaker 1 (16:36) For part of my career, it was every 12 months, a three-day check ride, and then became a two-day check ride every nine months. And part of it is we go over accidents. They do review. Speaker 1 (16:51) any potential terrorist threats, what's going on, general outlook. They give us some defensive training on how to, you know, if they're trying to storm the cockpit, slow them down so they can get the cockpit door shut and locked. And they're Kevlar now, so you can't get through them. And they do give us some training. They do give us rundowns. A lot of it is in this hijacking, this is what they did. This is what they should have done. This is what they did right. This is what they did wrong. And it was always, this is, they're after money, they're after something. They're not taking an airplane, let alone four or more, and use them as weapons. So it just, the whole outlook was changing. And nobody had a handle on what it was changing to. So it was a lot of reactions. Speaker 1 (17:51) One of the best decisions made that entire day was President Bush grounding all the airplanes. Because I... Speaker 1 (18:04) We were told in our briefings that, for example, at United, there were half a dozen box cutters or so found in the seat backs of at least eight of our airplanes. Speaker 2 (18:16) And that's just United Airlines alone? That was just Speaker 1 (18:19) United. Speaker 2 (18:19) Eight different flights with box cutters? Speaker 1 (18:22) Yes. Please understand that was 25 years ago. So I'm a little bit older. Speaker 1 (18:31) It could have changed, gone up, gone down, the actual number, but that's what we were briefed in one of our sessions, one of my check rides. And I did learn one plane they found box cutters on was a flight from Chicago to Seattle that my parents were on. Speaker 2 (18:52) Wow. Speaker 1 (18:54) And it had started the taxi out. They grounded everything. It turned around, taxied back to the gate, never got off the ground. Speaker 2 (19:01) And about what time would that have been? What month and year? Speaker 1 (19:05) That would have been September 11th. about 10 o'clock in the morning. Speaker 2 (19:10) So your parents were on a flight from Chicago to Seattle? Speaker 1 (19:14) Yeah, he was going out with a bunch of classmates for a salmon fishing trip in Anchorage. He was connecting in Seattle. Speaker 2 (19:20) Charlie, I don't think I've ever heard of this story and I've covered so many 9-11 stories. This is unbelievable. At 10 o'clock, your parents would have been on that plane and there was a box cutter on Speaker 1 (19:31) the plane. From what I, yeah, yes. From what I learned in our briefings. Speaker 2 (19:36) No. Speaker 1 (19:39) So, okay, so we back to, we were told our airplanes at gate C20, take it over the hangar. They want to inspect it. Never really told inspect for what. I don't think they knew what they were inspecting