The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

On 9/11, seemingly inconsequential decisions were often the difference between life or death. People who would otherwise have been at locations above the site of Flight 11’s impact zone into the North Tower (above which no one survived) were waylaid by random circumstances. Jared Kotz returned to his Manhattan office to collect forgotten publications for an exhibit at Windows on the World and was thus out of the building when the plane hit. He reflects, “My decision to forgo breakfast and run back to the office was another reason I had survived. If I had stayed there for breakfast, I wouldn’t be alive” (568). Richard Eichen didn’t have the key to enter his office suite. Michael Lomonaco made a spur-of-the-moment detour to the Concourse underneath the North Tower to see an optometrist for new glasses, instead of going straight to his office on the 106th floor. David Kravette volunteered to go down to the lobby from his office on the 105th floor to sign a guest in at the lobby reception desk. As in the case of Kotz, Eichen, and Lomonaco, Kravette reflects, “It’s a comedy of errors that I’m alive. Everyone else in my office upstairs that day perished” (80).