Wichita's Eisenhower National Airport USA Today  says it is one of the best airports in the nation. When the F.A.A. made the decision to immediately ground every non-military flight on September 11, 40 passenger airliners and seven cargo flights landed in Wichita as it is a high-capacity airport with long runways. The interesting story is  here .  I wish to focus on one aspect of the story because it relates to some of the unfortunate division in our nation today.  A small portion of the 47 planes that had to immediately land in Wichita One of the flights that landed in Wichita was Israel's EL AL Airlines' Flight #005 to Los Angeles. Most None of the passengers had never been to America's Heartland before, some had never been to the USA before, and some of them didn't speak English. According to news coverage, many of the passengers were afraid to land in Wichita because they were concerned the great people of our city would be anti-Semitic and/or would 'blame...

A wonderful column answering that question is here . 

Today is the commemoration of one of the saddest days in American history. What makes this sad day especially poignant is the lost of so many innocent civilian lives. The weather in NYC the day before featured severe thunderstorms. A short film about the weather of September 10 captured the World Trade Center's final hours. Among the flights diverted to Wichita While we've written previously about September 11, we've never talked about what happened in Wichita and at our old airport that day. When the "all land immediately" order was dispatched to all planes in America's airspace, among the planes that landed here was an El Al flight full of Israeli citizens. They were terrified that Wichitans would somehow blame them for the attack and, at first, refused to get off the plane. A local rabbi was called to calm them and by the end of their visit they went line dancing.  The full story is here . H/T: Cat Taylor