Julie Jacobson / AP file: Two United flight attendants look to the actual crash site just before the start of the memorial service at the temporary memorial to Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2002.

Charles Leocha, MSNBC’s travel columnist, says, “When it comes to safety, air crews are your first line of defense“:

The war on terror continues, and yet few remember that the first casualties were flight attendants. In the six years since 9/11, there have been many ceremonies and many remembrances for those who died in that day’s tragic events. Police officers, firefighters and other first responders gather every year with political bigwigs on stages across America. Sadly, flight attendants are almost never included. That’s a shame. I’ve said so on every anniversary of the September attacks, and I say so again this year.

Airline flight attendants are unsung heroes in this country’s “war on terrorism.” Recent events demonstrate that this is true now more than ever. The efforts to attack us have not abated, but they have been thwarted by better intelligence and higher levels of security. For example, when terrorists came up with new ways to mix explosives with liquids last year, the Department of Homeland Security banned liquids aboard the nation’s aircraft. Once again, flight attendants found themselves on the front line of a war whose battles are constantly shifting while ever exposing them to danger.
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Every time a plane takes off, every time a traveler stands up and walks toward the cockpit, and every time a passenger ducks behind his seat to dig through carry-on luggage, flight attendants go on high alert.
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Are our memories so short?

Flight attendants were the most consistent source of information on 9/11 when, at the risk of their lives, they phoned airline operations personnel to let them know about the hijackings; they even provided seat numbers and descriptions of the hijackers. Flight attendants were most certainly involved with the in-cabin attack on the terrorists aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania instead of into a building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Later, in one of the few instances of terrorism thwarted in the act, a diminutive flight attendant physically prevented a fanatic from lighting a fuse to a shoe-bomb that would have downed American Airlines Flight 63 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

So, let’s get our priorities straight.

Please read the whole thing.