Behind the scenes: How this Utahn helped shut down U.S. airspace on 9/11

On Sept. 11, 2001, the managers of America’s airspace faced an unprecedented challenge: ground every plane in the sky, immediately.

At the heart of that response was Chris Metts, then a senior Federal Aviation Administration official responsible for the National Airspace System. He was headed for a medical school but pivoted to aviation studies after discovering a passion for the industry as an air traffic controller — a gig originally intended to occupy his summers off of school.

Metts rose quickly through the ranks of the FAA to become a key figure in U.S. airspace oversight.

In this candid interview, Metts, who now oversees the Project Alta advanced air mobility initiative for Utah aerospace industry group 47G, shares his unique insight on what was going on inside the FAA command center in Washington, D.C. on 9/11 and how those events would go on to reshape the future of global passenger air travel.

On that day, al-Qaeda terrorists crashed two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers on a fourth plane, United Flight 93, fought back, causing the aircraft to crash in a Pennsylvania field before reaching its intended target, which was believed to be the White House or U.S. Capitol.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks and thousands more were injured. The incidents had global political repercussions and led to sweeping changes in security protocols related to commercial air travel in the U.S. and across the world.

This interview with Chris Metts has been edited for length and clarity.

Deseret News: Can you walk us through your experience on Sept. 11, 2001?

Chris Metts: My responsibilities were the airspace of the United States — protecting and developing the procedures utilized by air traffic control, including what would later be looked at as hijack procedures. That was my responsibility as the branch manager over the National Airspace System.

I remember coming into work early, like we always did, and assembling together. In hindsight, I recall how many people mentioned the beauty of that morning. It was a particularly beautiful morning — clear skies, no haze, perfect temperature, not a cloud to be seen.

DN: What was the moment you realized something extraordinary was happening?

CM: We were notified that an aircraft or something had hit the World Trade Center. The first impression was that it was likely a general aviation aircraft. Like everyone else, we went to the television sets while also gathering information.

Around that time, we started getting more reports about missing aircraft in that region from air traffic control facilities. I started to have a heightened sense of awareness. We began making and receiving phone calls, and in real time, FAA headquarters wanted updates, while also making sure the operational units weren’t distracted so they could continue functioning.

We had never considered a civil aircraft being used as a weapon the way we later would learn was taking place.

Any time a hijack had occurred in the past, the key was getting them on the ground and then negotiations. Where do they want to go and what do they want? In this case, none of that presented. They just started falling off our radar scopes, non-responding.

DN: Were you and your team concerned for personal safety, working out of a D.C.-based office?

CM: Just a few minutes after hearing reports there were aircraft headed for D.C., American 77 hit the Pentagon. We can see the smoke at the Pentagon from FAA headquarters. We can literally look out our window and see, so now there’s that heightened sense of safety and security. And DC is being shut down.

But there was also probably a logistical reassurance that if the Pentagon is the target, we won’t be next. It would more likely be a larger target. We just kicked into operational, first responder-type mode. An air traffic controller is a first responder on a daily basis. If something’s happening, they don’t get up from their scope and their chair and turn off their radios and say, ‘Good luck and run. They say, What do you need? Where do we send the services?’

DN: How did the decision to shut down U.S. airspace come about?

CM: The first decision was while we figure this out, no departures. We’re ground stopping all aircraft from American airports. That was the first decision that was made.

Then, we started to realize all three aircraft that had crashed — still prior to United 93 —were wide-body, cross-country flights. We discussed whether we should stop all heavy aircraft, and those conversations evolved.

Up until that time, the FAA and (Department of Defense) would only talk on an as-needed basis. We didn’t necessarily have overlapping and aligned operations. We would certainly share what each other were doing, but we did not have direct access to the right folks at DOD. So, we had to establish, that morning, those open communications links, with the FBI, Secret Service, with the White House with DOD. Every concerned entity had to be brought into a communication link. And we all came to the decision that the airspace needed to be shut down.

I remember that in the System Command Center, a gentleman named Ben Sliney (FAA national operations manager at the time) went ahead and gave the order on all of our behalf that all airborne aircraft were to land immediately at their closest safe airport.

DN: What were the logistics of landing thousands of planes at once?

CM: Controllers know how to identify airports, sequence aircraft, dump fuel if necessary before landing. They know how to do this.

But now, it’s exponentially increased because there are 4,500 aircraft that need to land, and right away.

We had to consider: Are the runways long enough? Can they take off afterward? Eventually, we stopped that conversation. We realized we don’t need to worry about takeoff. Let’s get the aircraft on the ground.

So we started sequencing: how many to which airports, fuel dumping procedures, and how to effectively disseminate the broadcast message.

DN: Did it get dangerous? Were there any close calls?

CM: There were not. There really were not, and that’s a credit to a lot of things.

First, U.S. airspace is the safest in the world, even more so back then. The controller workforce knew what they were doing.

It was really an orchestrated, industrywide endeavor that was pretty incredible.

DN: How long did it take to reopen the airspace, and what changes were made?

CM: We kept the aircraft on the ground for almost a week — five-and-a half-days comes to mind.

The Situation Room only spooled up from there. Only a few people were permitted inside. I was at FAA headquarters from 9/11 through almost December, not leaving.

After Flight 93 crashed and every aircraft was accounted for, we took a breath. That’s when the next phase began. Aviation security was handled by FAA at the time, so they came into the Situation Room and assembled a safety team.

We started working on what was necessary to begin flying again — setting milestones, developing procedures, implementing changes. Those boards and notes from that room, I understand, are now in the (National) Archives.

DN: Did the FAA get the recognition it deserved for its role during 9/11?

CM: Never thought of that question before.

The culture at FAA is we need to be that quiet entity that everybody has faith and confidence in, that just works in the background.

You don’t want to compare it to a refrigerator, but you want to go to it, open it, and have it just work. That’s what you want from your air traffic system. You want to not think about it when you go to the airport. So, to slip back quietly into the background.

Is that recognition? I think it is. And I think we were able to do that fairly rapidly once we turned aviation back on.

DN: How did 9/11 change the aviation industry?

CM: So our aviation safety folks started to recognize that in order to begin operations again, we needed to change screening, we needed to add additional search items. We needed to ban certain things from being on aircraft. And so they started to develop that list from what became TSA perspective — the pre-travel screening perspective — and then the other group started looking at it from the safety-of-flight perspective, and that’s where procedures were developed.

A requirement before we could start again was to reinforce the flight deck door. That was one of the main things. And then the other thing we did was to develop the colored risk levels. I don’t know if you remember that or not, but there was red, orange, yellow, blue, green.

Then we developed protocol. When you’re at orange, you need to have extra staffing to this level, in the air traffic world a supervisor for every other position versus every five positions. We needed to deploy different procedures depending on the threat level.

We needed to develop procedures for reentering the airspace, for no radio, for hijacks. It wasn’t just ‘get them safely on the ground.’ It was take these actions, and we had to coordinate with the military for scrambling aircraft.

All of those things came from 9/11, things we now use over Super Bowls, big sporting events, NASCAR, the Academy Awards. We developed how we as a nation would protect that airspace, even against normal operations, and later drone operations.

Then we started down the road of what became Homeland Security and TSA. We started developing criteria for things like taking people’s shoes off. All of those things started generating from the aftermath of 9/11 and turning back on the airspace.

DN: Looking back, how do you feel about your career and the changes since 9/11?

CM: I could never have predicted what my career would look like, certainly not when I was just starting.

And now, to be doing the next generation of aviation, when aviation hasn’t changed for 70 years, to be at the front of that ...