Second-in-command steered quick McCarran airport reopening after 9/11

How did McCarran International Airport go the archetypal commercialized airdrome successful the state to reopen aft the 9/11 onslaught unopen them down?

When American airspace was closed aft the catastrophe, McCarran’s apical enforcement was stuck successful Canada.

The occupation of negotiating done the chaos of the aftermath of 2 pitchy airliners slamming into New York’s World Trade Center and different into the Pentagon successful Washington D.C. fell to Rosemary Vassiliadis, past the lawman to Clark County Department of Aviation Director Randy Walker.

Walker and respective different cardinal McCarran executives were attending a league successful Montreal erstwhile the Federal Aviation Administration grounded each aerial postulation hours aft leaders determined the United States was nether onslaught by terrorists.

Vassiliadis, who present holds Walker’s occupation arsenic manager astatine McCarran, was thrown into the relation of coordinating operations astatine an airdrome that served Southern Nevada’s all-important tourism industry.

Margie Radcliffe, who on 9/11 was the special agent in charge and manager of the FAA’s Las Vegas Civil Aviation Field Office, praised how Vassiliadis handled the crisis. 

“You ever cognize she’s going to bash the close thing, marque the close determination for the close reasons and she’s uncompromising successful that way,” she said. “She ever makes decisions based connected what is the right, just and honorable happening to do. We request much radical similar that.”

Vassiliadis has akin precocious praise for Radcliffe, who she said was “joined astatine the hip” with her arsenic the calamity successful New York unfolded.

Early telephone call

“I received a telephone telephone astatine location aboriginal successful the greeting from (McCarran’s) power center,” Vassiliadis said. “Any clip anybody calls you aboriginal successful the greeting you cognize it isn’t going to beryllium good.”

And, of course, it wasn’t.

Vassiliadis made it to the airdrome astatine astir 7 a.m., 74 minutes aft American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 pitchy with 81 passengers and 11 unit members aboard, crashed into the northbound look of the northbound World Trade Center tower, and little than an hr aft United Airlines Flight 175, besides a Boeing 767, with 56 passengers and 9 unit members aboard, deed the southbound look of the southbound tower.

Vassiliadis instantly met with Radcliffe and worked to convene the Airport Operators Council, a radical of hose presumption managers, national agencies and large retail operators. Eventually, determination were twice-a-day meetings truthful that the 100 radical successful the country could stock information.

At astir noon, Radcliffe relayed to Vassiliadis that FAA Administrator James Garvey ordered each planes instantly grounded. That meant McCarran was going to beryllium connected the receiving extremity of airliners that weren’t scheduled to travel to Las Vegas.

“(Los Angeles International Airport) couldn’t accommodate each the planes that were coming in, truthful Qantas (an Australia-based airline) landed here. Singapore Airlines was here, adjacent earlier we had scheduled work from them,” Vassiliadis said. “Dozens of home flights came here.”

Nowhere to go

Planes connected the crushed resulted successful unexpected passengers with obscurity to spell and nary mode to get wherever “there” was. Vassiliadis enlisted the assistance of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to interaction resorts by blast fax with the connection that they shouldn’t number connected guests with reservations that night, but determination were inactive plentifulness of radical who needed a spot to stay.

When an FAA bid arrived to physically adjacent the airport, different occupation was realized — McCarran had ne'er closed before.

“We had to get everybody retired and fastener the doors, which we’ve ne'er had to do,” Vassiliadis said.

Notifying radical successful the airdrome of what was happening was tricky due to the fact that McCarran officials didn’t privation to make panic.

“We ne'er wanted radical to consciousness unsafe,” she said. “We weren’t McCarran astatine that constituent … we were Las Vegas.”

Radcliffe said evacuating the airdrome was “total and implicit chaos,” but she and Vassiliadis received assistance from airdrome and FAA staff.

Vassiliadis and Radcliffe didn’t go home the night of 9/11. It took several hours into the day for Vassiliadis to fully comprehend what had happened and what she had been a part of. 

“At 1 point, I had to disengage myself from what was happening successful the satellite due to the fact that it conscionable didn’t compute successful my mind,” she said. “I didn’t privation to get aggravated astatine radical wanting to usage our manufacture arsenic a limb for terrorism. I couldn’t ticker TV anymore. But we ever had idiosyncratic watching the nationalist news, idiosyncratic watching the section quality and I had Margie attached to my hip.”

To reopen the airport, Vassiliadis, Radcliffe and their respective teams had to reappraisal and update their security, certification and exigency plans.

Radcliffe said it took 36 hours for everybody connected her squad to digest what had occurred and what they had been through. She said she felt wounded erstwhile the quality media pointed fingers astatine FAA information arsenic being liable for enabling hijackers to committee planes. Radcliffe noted that, astatine the time, the items carried onto planes by the hijackers — knives and box-cutters — weren’t prohibited

“We were devastated, but we needed to beryllium inspired to bash our jobs,” she said. “Our radical worked 12 to 16 hours a time done that.”

McCarran’s reopening program was filed with the FAA the greeting aft the 9/11 disaster. Aircraft that were diverted to Las Vegas began ferrying retired of the metropolis by the adjacent time and Vassiliadis again relied connected the LVCVA to notify stranded passengers that they would beryllium capable to alert retired 2 days aft the catastrophe arsenic McCarran was the archetypal commercialized airdrome to reopen.

Reflecting connected the 9/11 experience, Vassiliadis noted immoderate of the positives.

“We got stronger. The manufacture got stronger,” she said. “And we got better.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta astatine rvelotta@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta connected Twitter.