out of those that died, the ones you describe were probably the luckiest, if you could use that word, at least the ones in the first building were anyway. Those planes shift at a few hundred miles per hour and I'd suggest most of them wouldn't have seen it coming. Its the ones above where the planes hit that probably suffered the most. That feeling of being trapped there unable to get down..
I worked in a factory making plane seats at the time, I lost my job a month after 9/11 as an indirect result of airlines cancelling new orders for planes in the immediate aftermath when demand for air tr