WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bruce Despommier was in the control tower in Wichita when the first reports came in that an aircraft had struck the World Trade Center.
“At that point, no one knew anything,” Despommier said. “Nobody was given any other instruction other than—every aircraft, left within X amount of whatever airport they could get to get them on the ground now.”
The skies quickly fell silent under a nationwide ground stop. Despommier and his fellow controllers faced the task of guiding planes to land immediately. Wichita’s facilities were not built to handle such an influx…