All Airline Flights in U.S. Grounded

The skies above the nation emptied and all U.S. airports were closed for the first time in history, after the simultaneous hijackings of four commercial jetliners at the heart of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.

The airline industry tentatively planned to resume operations after 9 a.m. PDT today. But the Federal Aviation Administration also is expected to require new, tougher security measures for boarding passengers--measures that could severely hobble the system’s efficiency over the next few days, analysts said.

On Tuesday, an air travel system that normally moves 1.5 million people on more than 40,000 commercial and chartered U.S. flights was brought to a standstill, as the more than 5,000 jets that crisscross the country were grounded by the FAA as a precaution in case of other attacks.

Federal authorities also quickly diverted hundreds of international flights bound for the U.S. to airports elsewhere, mainly in Canada. Airlines in Asia, Europe and other continents suspended service to the United States.

Los Angeles International Airport was closed and evacuated.

Amtrak rail service and Greyhound bus operations also were halted, mainly in the Northeast.

“The airline transportation system as we knew it died as of 9 a.m. New York time,” when the second hijacked jetliner plowed into the World Trade Center, said Michael Boyd, president of aviation consulting firm Boyd Group in Evergreen, Colo.

Air travelers’ “ability to walk through a simple security system run by people who don’t know security is gone,” he said.

The astonishing shutdown of air travel provided one of the most tangible ways that Americans across the country felt a direct ripple effect of the attacks on the East Coast.

Not only could countless numbers of travelers not fly, but thousands of others also found themselves landing in cities other than their destinations, as the FAA ordered en route jets to land at the nearest airport.

Any prolonged shutdown of the air travel system and the resultant disruption of business and leisure travel and cargo flights could cause serious harm to the U.S. economy.

On Tuesday, aircraft flown by the U.S. Postal Service and cargo carriers such as United Parcel Service and FedEx--which move the nation’s mail and billions of dollars in goods around the country daily--also were grounded by the FAA.

The airline industry and the airports--notably LAX--quickly became a focal point of the nightmarish tragedy, owing to the terrorists’ use of four commercial jetliners to carry out the suicide missions. All four were flying to California, and together they carried more than 260 people.

American Airlines, the nation’s largest airline, confirmed that two of its flights were seized and used in the attacks. Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, was one of the jetliners that hit the World Trade Center towers in New York. The other American Airlines plane that was hijacked was Flight 77, a Boeing 757 flying from Washington’s Dulles Airport to Los Angeles. That aircraft was the one that crashed into the Pentagon.

United Airlines also lost two jetliners. Flight 175 from Boston’s Logan Airport to Los Angeles, a 767, was the other jetliner that slammed into the World Trade Center. United Flight 93, a 757 en route to San Francisco from Newark, N.J., crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

“We are horrified by these tragic events,” said Donald Carty, chairman of American Airlines.

Stifling LAX’s operations alone, even for a short while, could have a huge effect on Southern California. It is the world’s third-busiest airport in terms of passengers handled--more than 200,000 people a day, who come and go via 100,000 cars and scores of shuttles, vans and other vehicles--and its annual economic contribution to the region amounts to more than $60 billion.

“When the airports open, it is really going to be worse than any major storm because every airport has been closed,” said Terry Trippler, president of consulting firm Trippler & Associates in Minneapolis.

“My gut feeling is that it will take until this weekend for everything to get back to normal as far as air travel is concerned,” he said. Others said there could be widespread fear among consumers about flying again soon, which could further cripple the airline industry.

The shutdown also could hurt the car rental agencies, which do most of their business at airports, although there were reports that many stranded passengers descended on the firms Tuesday as they scrambled for alternative transportation.

It’s “already a tough year for the car rental industry, and this could be devastating,” said Jon LeSage, research director at Abrams Travel Data Services in Long Beach. Moreover, Mondays through Wednesdays are the biggest rental days because of heavy business travel, he said.

Mary Jersin, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways, said that the carrier had eight U.S.-bound flights either diverted to Vancouver, Canada, or canceled and that it called off four more that were scheduled to leave Hong Kong after midnight early today.

Jetliners also lined up on the tarmacs of Canadian airports after U.S. airspace was closed, and passengers emerged stunned by events south of the border.

Lee Manchen of Detroit, a passenger heading home on a Northwest Airlines flight from Tokyo, said the pilot announced that mechanical problems had forced him to divert the plane to Vancouver. The pilot later apologized, Manchen said, for not telling the truth, saying, “It was the worst day of our lives, and he would remember it forever.”

American Airlines pilot Larry McCalley, 58, of Mission Viejo arrived at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport expecting to work. But he, like other pilots, was sent home. McCalley said that until about 10 months ago, American’s ill-fated Flight 11 was his flight.

“It just seems a shame that the world has to come to this--all the victims,” McCalley said, visibly stunned. “You think about it but you look at the probability of something like this happening, but you don’t really expect it.”

John Wayne Airport officials closed that facility about 9 a.m., although few members of the public were there at the time. No flights had taken off, and about 20 jets sat empty and silent at their gates or on the tarmac.

Yolanda Perez, a spokeswoman for the airport, said the facility’s secured areas had been evacuated about 7 a.m.--the time the first flights leave John Wayne--and cars were barred from parking curbside and security was increased. The airport normally handles about 270 departures and arrivals daily involving about 6,000 passengers.

Xavier Jorquiera, 41, of Rancho Santa Margarita was aboard an American Airlines flight to Mexico City about 6 a.m. when the order came to evacuate the plane, which was still on the ground. He wasn’t told the reason until passengers were back in the terminal.

“It’s horrible. It’s a tragedy,” he said.

Boyd, the independent airline analyst, blamed the extent of the damage square on the FAA, charging that the agency has allowed security to be lax at passenger check-in points around major airports.

“The airport perimeters at many airports have been sieves, and the FAA has done nothing about it,” he said. FAA officials could not be immediately reached to respond.

Travel and airline experts said the tragic events could result in devastating short-term losses for the major U.S. carriers and may lead to higher ticket prices as the companies pass on to consumers the costs of tightened security measures.

The new security clearances that passengers will face are expected “to be quite draconian,” said Steve Alterman, president of the Cargo Air Line Assn., an industry trade group in Washington.

“We must try to get back to normal business as quickly as we can, just to show these terrorists that they can’t shut us down--although they have for at least one day,” Alterman said. “But the new airport security will slow things down.”

Several experts said many airlines’ contracts would require them to offer full refunds to travelers who fear flying in the wake of the terrorist attacks, and they predicted that airlines would see a drop-off in ticket sales to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The tragedy Tuesday is known as a force majeure incident beyond the airlines’ control. In such cases, travelers are entitled to a refund or to accept what alternate flights the airlines offer, Trippler said.

Phone calls at Bestfares.com were down 80% to 90%, said Tom Parsons, chief executive of the travel services firm. “And the calls the airlines are getting are, ‘How can I not fly?’ ”

American Airlines said it was trying every means possible to get diverted passengers to their destinations or to put them in hotels until air travel resumes. The airlines also said they will work with passengers to accommodate flight changes.

Midwest Express, for example, said it will waive change fees and refund rules for those scheduled to travel until Monday. The Milwaukee-based airline said travelers could extend their travel dates for up to one year from the date of ticket issue.

Jersin of Cathay Pacific said that the airline had not received a lot of cancellations, but that any passengers fearful of flying could exchange their tickets without paying a penalty.

“There probably will be people that will not want to fly for a while, and we’re very flexible as far as that,” she said.

Aaron Gellman, a professor at the Transportation Center at Northwestern University, said the overall effect on the economy could be devastating.

“The airlines are the most vulnerable and would be most affected by this,” Gellman said. “It’s impossible to predict with any precision what’s going to happen. This is a very important, watershed event.”

Parsons said the attacks could lead to a wholesale review of security measures, particularly those applied to domestic travelers.

“I think in America, we’ve never had the true fear of travel, like you do in Tel Aviv. Look at El Al,” Parsons said, referring to the Israeli airline. “They may inspect your bag three times before it gets on the plane. You go to Europe; you see the dogs and the guns in the airports. I think high security we’ve talked about, we’ve had opportunities to bring in good equipment, but we’ve never spent the money on it, not on the domestic side.”

But he noted that the terrorists who attacked key targets Tuesday evidently didn’t need to smuggle bombs aboard planes to inflict unimaginable damage.

A multi-ton airliner is “better than any weapon I can think of,” Parsons said. “With these planes and their fuel tanks full, you had a flying bomb.”

Travel experts suggested that a permanent increase in airline security has been long overdue.

“In the past, passengers continuously have agreed in surveys that they would pay more for security,” consultant Trippler said. “How much more remains to be seen. They’ve never been told how much more. Will they pay $10 a ticket, $5 a ticket? We as consumers have done a lot of complaining on airline lines, but we may have to go back to where everyone is checked in” in person without such timesavers as electronic ticketing.

Greyhound ceased scheduled bus service in the Northeast, and 30 terminals throughout the country temporarily suspended service, including East Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento. The terminals were closed because of their proximity to airports and federal buildings, Greyhound spokeswoman Kristin Parsley said.

Like other airlines, Japan’s All Nippon Airways was scrambling Tuesday to figure out how to handle the hundreds of passengers who were being diverted all over North America in search of a safe haven.

Thomas Fredo, an ANA spokesman in New York, said four flights headed for New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco were diverted to either Vancouver or Detroit. He said those passengers were likely to spend the night there while officials await further word on when U.S. airspace would reopen.

Fredo, who works in Rockefeller Center, four or five miles north of the World Trade Center, said the attack was horrific.

“I don’t have anything to compare this to,” he said. “The only thing this vaguely reminds me of is the day John F. Kennedy was shot.”

Times staff writers Evelyn Iritani and Kathleen Brady in Los Angeles and Kimi Yoshino, John O’Dell and Marc Ballon in Orange County contributed to this story. Times wire services also contributed.