The Tuesday when everything chanaed

摘要

When the first reports came in of a massive fire engulfing the upper floors of one of New York City's World Trade Center towers, it was not immediately clear what had caused it. Unconfirmed eyewitness accounts suggested that an aircraft was involved, and that it looked deliberate. Any ambiguity about the origins of the inferno were all but confirmed minutes later when a second jet slammed into the second tower at the southernmost tip of Lowe Manhattan. In all, four airliners were hijacked on September 11, 2001 - the other two having crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia and a field in Pennsylvania. It was an audacious co-ordinated attack that cost nearly 3,000 lives and triggered the most profound shake-up the aviation industry had ever seen. September marks the 20th anniversary of the atrocities. Beyond the human tragedy of that Tuesday morning and the geo-political earthquake it unleashed, the attack had far-reaching implications for airports and airlines, demanding sweeping changes in security procedures that remain in place today. Before 9/11, no US-registered aircraft had been bombed or hijacked in more than a decade. While isolated incidents such as the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway spurred transport authorities worldwide to consider how to improve safety and security measures, the sheer magnitude of 9/11 meant this was prioritised like never before.