Time flies, but it's as though it was just yesterday.
I got the call from Tim Ahern around 22:15 that night to report over to SOC... he said we'd lost contact with an airplane, and I remember asking him if it was a drill.... For those who know the area around HDQ, I lived at Hillcrest Apts up on Post Oak, and made it from my apartment to SOC in about four minutes, slowing only to cross Trinity Blvd...
Bob Stewart (former GM at SAN) and I wound up spending the next five nights dealing with all the stuff that CARE couldn't do at the time, e.g. reconciling tickets to PNRs to the manifests, surfing thru the check-in system to validate bags, infants, and anything else we could find. This was before customers had to leave next of kin information before departing, so it wasn't easy.
My most vivid memory of that evening.... Art Pappas (director of SOC at the time) and Crandall were sitting to my right in the Command Center (3rd floor at SOC, and I recall both Crandall and Don O'Hare having the presence of mind to put on suits...).
Someone from CARE (I think it was either Kelly Cox or Wes Friedman) were telling Art how many infants had been onboard, and he was relaying that to Crandall at Bob's request. CARE was reporting based on what was in the PNR's, but I'd just gotten off the phone with MIA, where we'd reconciled infant tickets & orange stickers to names on the manifest, and came up four short of CARE's number. I told them our number, Art insisted his was accurate, and we went back and forth for a minute or so, with Crandall's head turning back and forth like watching a ping-pong match up close. Bob's response was simply "get it right."
An hour or two later, CARE confirmed that our number was correct, and I don't think Art ever forgave me for contradicting him in front of The Chairman, let alone being correct...
It's an experience I never wanted to repeat, yet had to twice more in the following six years.
If I recall, one of the survivors was a TW employee traveling with her parents... All four were seated over the wing box (yet another task we had -- mapping survivors to the seat map).
