Everyone walks away before I could tell them that the woman wanted to travel with her friends on flight 175 and that their brother/uncle had by coincidence attended a meeting at the WTC that morning despite being a random Irish guy and not a New Yorker and he’d been helping a woman who had been severely burned by jet fuel find an ambulance when the plane his sister and niece were aboard slammed into the other tower right above them.

Guess I’m not good at parties.

    • cardboardboxfort@lemmy.worldOP
      15·
      3 days ago

      Really happened. They were from a fairly well off Irish family and the sister got into selling makeup or something to wealthy families in New England. The brother got into software in the 1990’s and did pretty well for himself because of that. The sister wanted to take a vacation with her daughter to Disneyland and they invited one of the friends she’d made over the years, who I suspect was also wealthy enough to go on an impromptu vacation.

      The friend of the family couldn’t get a flight on 175 (not sure why not but likely because she was using frequent flyer miles and didn’t have them for United but could use them on American Airlines–this part is my speculation but I wonder why she couldn’t get a seat on 175 cause there were plenty available so I assume it was something like what I theorized.) Since both non-stop flights left at about the same time they’d arrive in Cali at the same time so they were going to meet up at the airport. There was little chance of either plane running into weather delays or anything on account of the fantastic weather across nearly the entire USA that morning.

      The brother had a meeting that morning which got changed from some random hotel to the WTC. Since he was in the software business it’s not surprisingly it got changed to a high end venue in New York. I mean a finance software conference was taking place that morning on 106 so such things were common. As he told it he was reciting the Lords prayer with the woman who was burned right as the plane carrying his sister and niece hit.

      Sadly, the burn victim died something like 30 days later from sever burns all over her body. Definitely one of the stranger tales from that day but not to break the ice with during a party.