Flight 11 crew ‘unsung heroes’ of 9/11: Cabin attendant
- Bartlett had always worked AA Flight 11, but was on vacation that morning
- She was one of the last people to have seen the Flight 11 crew alive
- Bartlett: Flight 11 crew members were the "unsung heroes" of 9/11
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BOSTON (NewsNation) — Retired American Airlines flight attendant Donna Bartlett would have likely been on Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, the airplane that was hijacked and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
It was the flight Bartlett had always worked. But that morning, she was headed to Greece for vacation.
Bartlett recalled spending the morning with her coworkers before hopping on a plane to London where she was supposed to catch a connection to her vacation destination.
“I left Boston at the same time they did,” Bartlett said.
But high in the sky over the Atlantic, Bartlett didn’t hear about the attacks until a little while after she landed in Europe.
“It was a very scary day in my life,” she said.
When Bartlett did hear about the attack, and heard it was Flight 11, she knew her crew was gone. She was one of the last people who had seen them before they were killed.
“To talk to them about when they were gone, what they were doing on their layovers, was something that I will never forget. It will stick with me forever,” Bartlett said.
After 9/11, Bartlett didn’t return to work for a couple of months. She explained that before 9/11, she didn’t have a job where she thought people might try to kill her or that she feared. Before 9/11, Bartlett had a job that she loved.
It took her a while, but she eventually returned to work, determined to not let the terrorists win.
“I went to work and held my head up high. But I will say, it was scary,” Bartlett said. “It was very, very scary looking at everybody, wondering if somebody’s out there that wants to hurt you. It changed my life and my job tremendously.”
But looking back now, Bartlett said the crews who died were the unsung heroes of 9/11. She explained that they likely saved thousands of lives that day.
“They were the actual first real responders,” she said. “They took a situation they weren’t trained in and improvised.”
Members of the flight crew, including Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney, notified the ground crew of the hijacking. Barlett believes that if those women hadn’t made those calls to the FAA, the government would have taken a lot longer to figure out what was going on, potentially leading to additional attacks.
“They are my heroes,” Bartlett said.
