Snow Day Research

            Research this week went really well. I finalized the topic of my research paper, calling it Scared to Fly: The Effects of September 11 on the United States Airline Industry. The snow day gave me a lot of time to really dig into a lot of sources online, even with the library closed. I found a great magazine article written by actual airline pilots that was a huge find for me. I had been looking for something written for airline pilots to back up a lot of facts that I had found that were published by different organizations. When I finally found something, it just happened to be a great first hand account of the day and really described how the tragedy effected them not only while they were on the job but also in their personal lives.

Reading the article by the pilots really made me think about what could have been. The pilots commend their respective airlines and the government for acting quickly, but they also point out that there would have been no stopping any further attacks if they were already in motion on that day. It’s really scary to think about how bad it could have been if that were the case. The amount of airliners hijacked could have been much higher, but it wasn’t.

Overall, I think I’m very close to completing the research portion of my paper. I have a lot of lengthy documents that describe the lasting effects of September 11 as well as personal accounts from pilots and passengers who describe how the day changed their lives. A lot of what I have left to do is organizational, highlighting and taking notes from documents as well as develop an outline for my paper. It’s all downhill from here!