Many of you know that I was flying back home to SFO on September 11, 2001. It is hard to believe that it has been 18 years since that fateful day.

For a narrative of my experiences you can read my post Remembering September 11.

Here is what my flights were scheduled to be on September 11.

In this post I will show the flights that I actually took during my journey home from South Africa.

My journey began on September 10 at the Cape Town International Airport and I took an overnight flight to Heathrow in London.

My flight on September 11 was to have ended at SFO, but instead we landed in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The plane was parked on an apron far from the terminal and we were put on a school bus. We were quickly processed and set on to a hotel near the airport.

The next morning we were taken back to the airport and put back on the plane and sent back to London. British Airways had no ground support at Edmonton and with not knowing when they would be able to fly into the US again wanted their 747 back home.

After spending two nights in different hotels near Heathrow I was finally able to fly home. I was on the first LHR/SFO flight after flights resumed. It was a long journey home from South Africa.

The maps above are all from Google Maps and do not show probable flight paths. I wanted to show all the flights together, so found another website where I could do that.

greatcirclemap.com

Here are the four flights on a map created at the Great Circle Map website. Of course the LHR – YEG segment would not have had the conventional flight path, but not too much different.

Overall the total flight length was almost 20,000 miles and took about 40 hours.

I came home to a very different America. The past 18 years have been interesting as the events have both brought people together and driven them apart on different issues.

Lots of memories today.

Steven