Jenkins Automotive owner recounts harrowing flight experience during 9/11

Sep. 11—ROCKINGHAM — A week of catching walleye, Northern Pike and Muskies in Saskatchewan, Canada, turned into a harrowing plane flight that unfolded on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, for Jenkins Automotive Owner Graham Jenkins.

A friend, part of a group of Ford Motor Co. executives, invited Jenkins to the Canadian fishing trip. When they took the six-hour bus ride back to Saskatoon on Sept. 10, they could never predict what would happen on their 7:00 a.m. flight the next day.

"It was supposed to be a normal morning with a normal flight back to Minneapolis," Jenkins shared in some pre-written notes. "Little did we know what the day would bring."

Jenkins, a private pilot who had about five years of experience at the time, brought an aviation GPS device, a recent birthday present, onto the flight. He had previously written to North-West Airline and gotten permission to use it during his travel. It was so new and high-tech at the time, the pilot of the over 300-passenger plane visited Jenkins in his Row 9 seat to learn more about the device. Jenkins was a novice to the device and played around with its functions during the flight.

As his GPS device tracked the flight, there was nothing off during the initial flight, apart from one unruly passenger who was determined to be in first class, but was forced into Coach 3, according to Jenkins. He later struck up a conversation with one of the stewardess who addressed the issue.

Eventually, Jenkins noticed a eastward deviation from their intended route. He knew they weren't heading to their intended destination.

"I wish you could see what I see in my mind," Jenkins said. "Instead of 30,000 feet, we were 15,000 feet. We were so close to the trees you could see eagles leaving their nest and taking off."

Minutes later, the captain addressed all of the about 330 passengers on the Boeing 737 while they were still in Canadian airspace.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention," the captain announced. "I've flown commercially for 17 years and have never received the information I'm receiving right now. Please have a seat, I will be right back once we analyze some information."

Minutes later — "It appears that the East Coast of the United States is under some form of military attack. The FAA has informed me that US Airspace is closed and all flights are grounded...I promise all of you when we sit this bird down we will be on US soil."

The captain acknowledged that the plane had descended to avoid radar. Of course, none of the passengers knew about the hijacked planes. They were diverted to a small public airport in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Jenkins compared the airport they landed on to the one at Pinehurst. "They weren't prepared for us," he said.

Jenkins recalled that passengers attempted to call their loved ones from their rudimentary cell phones devices, but only a few had success. From the pilot's initial announcement, it was about an hour and half until the plane landed. "It was uneasy," Jenkins said. "No one knew what was going on."

When they landed, the passengers were not allowed to leave, since there was no Customs personnel at the small airport. Two employees at the airport recruited some officers from a nearby military base for assistance. When the military arrived, they were able to leave the plane.

"There was a lot of chaos," Jenkins recalled. "Everyone was trying to find out what was going on." Two televisions were brought in so the passengers could catch up on the news unfolding before their very eyes. There was one payphone that the 330 passengers could use to call loved ones. Jenkins knew that his seventh-grade daughter, Catherine, knew that he was in a plane, and he needed to convey that he was ok.

"Everybody was kind of in shock," Jenkins said. All of the passengers were unable to leave, and Jenkins said they were all under FBI custody for about 10 hours. The stewardess from earlier was in distressb— her husband flew the path of the Pennsylvania crashed plane about three times a month.

"When she found out that the plane had gone down, she assumed it was her husband," Jenkins said. "The rest of the day, she thought her husband died." They later found out he was on a different airline that morning.

Jenkins said that security emerged from the plane with the man who had been causing a disturbance earlier. The man was fully shackled. Jenkins said within an hour, a government-owned Lear jet landed, with three black-suited FBI agents who took the man into custody and left with him.

Soon after this exchange, Jenkins said more commotion followed. One of the military dogs had signaled that were something of interest in the under belly luggage compartment of the plan. All of the gathered plane passengers were moved into an adjacent field.

"I don't understand to this day — how the dogs distinguished thousands of gallons of fuel from [whatever the dog picked up] within feet of each other," Jenkins recollected. He was told the next day from the stewardess that incendiary devices — munitions that can easily start fire — were located in the luggage of the plane.

Jenkins said he was later told by the stewardess that the suspect in custody had a plan to arrive in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and get on a plane that would fly into the Mall of America. Zero corroborating information about this detail could be found online.

Jenkins believes the suspect from the plane was part of the group of other 9/11 hijackers. Zero information or corroborating details regarding information from this flight could be located online.

From that drawn-out Tuesday, a few vehicles were provided to his executive friends, where they formed a caravan from North Dakota to Oklahoma to Nashville, Tennessee to Raleigh.

"As I came into town [that Friday], the Raiders were playing football and I knew my family was out there," Jenkins said. "I walked in and man, I just had to hug everybody within 50 feet. They knew what we had been through... People I didn't really even know were hugging me."

The United States emerged from the aftermath of 9/11 much different. Boarding a flight was obscenely different. The GPS device that Jenkins carried on his flight is no longer permitted for passengers. Jenkins said the friend that originally invited him on the trip had just called him this Sunday asking "You remember what you were doing 22 years ago?"

"It could have been a lot different," Jenkins mused about that fateful day. "We take a lot for granted every day. Everything...it kind of changed all of our life perspectives."

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Reach Matthew Sasser at 910-817-2671 or msasser@yourdailyjournal.com to suggest a correction.