[Porsche-O-Phile]

I was working as a flight instructor out of Santa Monica at the time with aspirations of being an airline pilot (at the time, the aviation industry was going gangbusters and it was a great career move). Woke up to a phone call from my brother (back in Boston) who said "just turn on the television". I asked what channel and he said "any of 'em", so I knew it was either going to be aliens landing/invading or something big on that kind of scale.

Pretty much spent the entire morning watching the events unfold. I went to work at about 10:30 pacific time (I had originally had a lesson scheduled for 11:00) but there was obviously nothing going on at the airport. No students ever showed up - mostly it was just instructors standing around dumbfounded wondering "what are we going to do now?"

I saw my work (and income) cut by about 2/3 due to students quitting over the next two months. I eventually got hired with a cargo outfit out of Burbank which would ordinarily have been a great "stepping stone" job to build time and experience in bigger aircraft in preparation for eventually getting hired by the airlines, but it ended up going nowhere. Simply no movement in the industry until I decided to hang that up in 2003 and go back to doing architectural work.

I still talk with a lot of my pilot buddies - the industry is still lousy, uncertain and very vulnerable. Bunch of guys I know got laid off ("furloughed" they call it) and never called back. Others (like me) languished in crappy jobs until their motivation or money ran out. Some are still there because they don't know what else to do.

It sure changed the aviation industry, that's for damn sure.