I was on an aeroplane. Flying from Nice to Zurich in the afternoon. If I'd been on a different aeroplane, say one flying from Boston, I most likely wouldn't be here. When we landed at Zurich we went to the business club lounge (at that point in my life I had more air miles than I knew what to do with), and noted that everyone was gathered around the TVs. Also notable was the fact that all the flights to North America seemed to be "delayed". The shock that hit me when I saw the endless repeats of those long distance shots of the planes hitting the towers in what was otherwise a beautiful cloudless morning is indescribable. It was hard to believe that this was real life and not a movie. And then we saw one of the towers collapse. And then we had to board our plane to Tokyo. It helped that this plane was going in the opposite direction, starting from an effiicent nation like Switzerland and ending in a nation that is (these days) rather harmless and self-effacing, so it seemed unlikely that we would be targeted, but none the less this was not a flight I was happy to be boarding.
I have to say that from that point on I have never boarded a plane without thinking of how I will behave if someone tries to hijack it. To the extent that it is possible I have moved myself from the "sheep" category to the "sheepdog" one to borrow from that excellent Bill Wittle article. In part this is because I have realised that the chances of my surviving a hijack are low so I might as well die trying to stop the hijacker as sitting in my seat praying to a God I don't believe in.