Mr. DON HERLBERT: My name is Don Herlbert. On 9/11, we caught the last plane out of National Airport. We flew out over the Pentagon. It was a beautiful day. And I looked down and I saw no aircraft on the runway, no aircraft landing, and no aircraft taxiing. And it's a beautiful sunny morning.</s>Mr. DON HERLBERT: So I did make the comment to my wife - gee, something's wrong here. And we flew off and had an uneventful flight until the pilot said we have been redirected to land immediately. And they put the airbrakes on, up in the air. And once again, I turned to my wife and said, geeze, I never seen them do that before.</s>Mr. DON HERLBERT: And we dropped from - I guess we were at 30 some thousand feet to almost ground level within minutes. They did make the comment that this is a black day in aviation - or United States aviation history, and I'm assuming the air traffic control computer system had totally gone bonkers. And there might have been some crashes and stuff but we had no idea until we landed. I lost five friends in the Pentagon.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Many lives were changed as a result of the September 11th attacks. You can hear more first person stories in an audio slide show at our Web site, npr.org.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: And NPR's DAY TO DAY continues.
Don Herlbert talks about of being on the last airplane to leave Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11. The airspace over the United States was cleared of commercial planes, an unprecedented move.