It was Sept. 11 all over again.

Or so it felt Monday morning after American Airlines flight… It was Sept. 11 all over again.

Or so it felt Monday morning after American Airlines flight 587 crashed at 9:17 a. m., three minutes after takeoff and five miles from JFK airport in New York City.

America had deja vu as the events eerily mirrored the attacks on Sept. 11. A plane crashed in New York just after 9 a.m.

Word spread quickly, as Americans turned on their TVs to catch the end of the morning news shows or ran into friends and coworkers on the street, in their classrooms or at their offices.

We gathered around our TV sets to see plumes of gray smoke rising over Queens, N.Y. and to hear eyewitness accounts. People described hearing explosions and seeing the plane crash. New York closed its airports, bridges and tunnels. American Airlines confirmed 260 people on the plane. Six people were unaccounted for on the ground.

With all of its scary similarity, some of us even prepared ourselves for reports of a second plane crash or of other missing planes. We quietly prepared ourselves to relive Sept. 11th