Twenty-five years ago I was newly married and working to finish my degree. When I first heard the news that an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center, my mind naturally went back to a 1945 incident when a wayward B-25 Mitchell bomber hit the Empire State Building in thick fog. Then came the news of a second plane hitting the other tower, then a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field. This was no wayward pilot off course, it was coordinated. It was deliberate.

What struck me then as a recent flight school student was that the hijackers knew what they were doing. In flight school, students are taught specific transponder codes to dial in and other subtle ways to communicate distress if the pilot is unable to talk on the radio. For most of the history of flight, terrorists needed the pilot to fly the plane. September 11 changed all that. The terrorists had all the same knowledge I had, and more. They knew the transponder, they could change codes or even turn the transponder off completely, and they did. They knew all the signals. They knew the cockpit. And they knew how to fly the plane. 

Flying is a sacred privilege. Slipping the surly bonds of earth comes with the responsibility to keep your passengers along with anyone on the ground safe. In good hands, flying can be an exhilarating, magical, experience. Dancing the skies on laughter-silvered wings and joining the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, as the poet and aviator John Gillespie Magee Jr. so eloquently wrote in High Flight.

The terrorists on 9/11 violated that privilege. They weaponized a civilian airliner, something intended for safety, grace and beauty. They used the magic and power of civilian flight to cause mass destruction and death. If their goal was to weaken American resolve and strike fear in the hearts of our citizens, however, they failed. 

Today, a quarter-century after 9/11, pilots all over the U.S. will take to the skies in commercial aircraft full of families and loved ones, in private jets headed to important business meetings, and in small aircraft at remote airfields. They will take off and land safely. They will take small general aviation craft up just for the sheer pleasure and freedom of chasing the shouting wind along. The terrorists not only failed on 9/11, they continue to fail every time we catch the wind and soar into the high untrespassed sanctity of space to touch the face of God.