![]() ![]() InterContinental (IHG) Hotels in New York City.I feel sorry for the families that lost loved ones and those who died. "It was a year or two before we got on a plane again. The doctor said: 'Are you alright?' And I said I couldn’t get it out of my brain. "Instead we went on holiday in the UK and we lasted a day. "We had a holiday booked to go to Vegas the following year and we cancelled it," Steve said. What the couple witnessed that day has had a lasting effect. ![]() READ MORE: Watch – crowd applauds as dog walker rescues hissing swan at beauty spot There was no-one there waiting for us and we drove back home.” There were a lot of nervous people on that plane. "When we got on the plane the captain put out a message on the speaker saying his plane was safe. "One thing that stood out for me was when we took off to fly home on Saturday evening about 7 or 8pm, Manhattan was like a black hole. "When we got to JFK – you could still see the silver smoke from the World Trade Center site. It was one of the first flights back to the UK. "We had flown out on September 10 and flew back on the Saturday after (September 15). He continued: "Everything else was turned off. The couple had just started their five-day break but it was already over in the most terrifying of circumstances. Smoke billowed from the 9/11 site for days. He had packed up for the day and went home to my mum, waiting to hear from us." "My dad was a roofer as well and he had heard the news and knew we were due to go up the Twin Towers. The couple went to the Empire Hotel in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, opposite the Lincoln Center, to make calls and continued to watch the coverage.Ī little over half-an-hour after the second plane hit the Towers, a third flight - American Airlines Flight 77 - hit the Pentagon having been hijacked after taking off from Washington DC's Dulles Airport.Ī fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, also from Washington, crashed in Shanksville, Pennysylvania, after passengers fought back against the hijackers, preventing it hitting its suspected target in the capital.Ĭhoking up, 20 years on, Steve said: "At the hotel, after several hours, we managed to get hold of my parents and Michelle manged to get hold of her parents and we told them we were safe. I remember walking around and she held my hand.”Īnd on September 11, they were about to do it again. My wife didn’t like the idea of getting on the roof. I can remember getting out on the World Trade Centre floor. "How you caught the lifts – they were humongous. And in 2000 we went to California and LA. They had booked their trip with Gray Line New York Tours at the Port Authority building and were excited to go up to the observation deck with its incredible views of the Big Apple. The couple had only arrived in New York the previous day, having visited three years earlier. ![]() Michelle Simmonds-Nutt pictured on the World Trade Center's South Tower observation deck in 1998 on the couple's first visit to New York "We went back to our hotel and watched it from there while trying to contact our parents.” There were thousands looking at the TV screens watching everything happen. "At Times Square we were looking up at the screens. We glimpsed the side of one of the towers, which had smoke coming from it. "On 9/11 I always think thank goodness we started in Harlem. Speaking ahead of the 20th anniversary of the terror outrages, Steve, now 54, told BirminghamLive: "I can talk about it now but I couldn’t for years. It meant they were well away from the Center - and the observation decks where they were due to look out over New York - when the tragedy happened. READ MORE: 9/11 Remembered: How tragedy united fire crews in New York and West Midlands They boarded a coach at 8am on September 11 and it headed to Harlem first - an outcome Steve called the "luck of the draw". Steve Simmonds-Nutt and his wife Michelle, from Streetly, said they may have owed their survival to the location their tour started from, which meant they had not reached the Twin Towers when the planes hit. ![]() A Midland couple with tickets to go up the World Trade Center on 9/11 said a twist of fate may have saved their lives. ![]()
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