With the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks drawing nearer, Chloe Berta Caviness sat at her kitchen table pondering the twist of fate that narrowly kept her from becoming one of the victims. Because of a scheduling error, the former United Airlines flight attendant has spent the last 25 ye ars torn between gratitude and guilt, joy and sorrow. “My story is unique in that I literally should have been on the plane,” Caviness said of Flight 175. “Like I would have been if I had my way, I would’ve been on the plane.” As a 22-year-old fresh out of college, Caviness found the perfect job as a flight attendant. She liked traveling and getting paid to see the world. She lived in Marin County but was officially based out of her native Boston. Her regular routine was to catch an overnight flight from San Francisco to Boston, arrive at 6 a.m. and then work the 8 a.m. flight to Los Angeles — Flight 175. She’d visit with friends in Los Angeles and then make her way back to the Bay Area. It was the perfect schedule. “It was really a fun job as a twenty-two year old,” she said. Courtesy Chole Berta Caviness — Chloe Berta Caviness worked as a United Airlines flight attendant, and visited with the crew of Flight 175 right before its hijacked plane flew into the World Trade Center. In August of 2001, Caviness was on vacation when the September schedule was made. Flight attendants would bid for their shifts, and Caviness’ friend and co-worker Sara Nelson put in her bid for her — but screwed up. Instead of prioritizing the 8 a.m. flight, she signed Caviness up for the 1 p.m. flight. Caviness was disappointed. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Caviness caught her routine flight to Boston, landing at 6 a.m. She hung out in the flight attendants’ meeting room, checking her schedule and visiting with the crew of Flight 175, the crew she would’ve been on if Nelson had correctly picked her schedule. She chatted with the team and fellow flight attendant Amy King. Then they parted. “We all went in the elevator and we all got off the elevator in the terminal,” Caviness recalled. “They went to the left to go to the flight, and I went right to meet my mom in town.” As Caviness and her mother strolled around Boston that morning, hijackers flew Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Caviness and her mother first learned of the attacks as people gathered on the sidewalk outside a bar to watch TV. A while later, a reporter who knew her broke the news that Flight 175 had crashed. “I just collapsed on the floor,” Caviness said. “I don’t really remember much after that.” She spent the next week in a fog — numb and in shock. Sixty-five people aboard the flight, including nine crew members, were gone. “I feel like it didn’t make any sense why I had the good fortune to have not been on that flight,” she said, sitting in her San Rafael home. She flipped through a small photo album filled with pictures from her flight attendant days. There she was, 22 years old, with her mom pinning her United Airlines wings on her uniform during a ceremony. A photo showed her learning to carve roast beef in the aisle of a plane. Others showed her posing next to fellow flight attendants — including friend Sara Nelson, whose scheduling error saved her. Chloe Berta Caviness looks through photos of her days as a flight attendant, in her San Rafael home. “It’s hard to even grasp the amount of gratitude I have for her,” Caviness said, “because literally without her I would’ve been on that plane.” While Caviness continued working as a flight attendant for another year, Nelson’s career took off. She now serves as international president of the Association of Flight Attendants and remains Caviness’ close friend. “I’m so grateful that I have my friend,” Nelson said over a video call from Washington, D.C. “But we both then also went through incredible painful grieving, losing our friends and trying to make sense of our profession that changed forever.” On Sept. 11, Nelson endured anxious hours not knowing whether her friend Caviness was on Flight 175 and not realizing her scheduling snafu. She reflected on the role of flight attendants far beyond serving meals and making sure passengers wear their seat belts. “When we go to work we’re not only aviation’s first responders like Chloe and I were trained when we started our careers 30 years ago,” Nelson said. “We’re also our nation’s last line of defense, and flight attendants think about that every single day before we go to work, frankly so the public doesn’t have to.” Caviness eventually left flying to get married and start a family in San Rafael. It was that new family that reframed her view of the attacks. On Sept. 11, 2003, she went into labor with her first daughter. “For me 9/11 was redefined as a joyous day,” she said. But the full weight of her close call hit years later as she walked into the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York and came to a wall bearing photographs of the victims arranged alphabetically. “I immediately saw where my photo would have been,” Caviness said. Caviness will tell her story this September 11th at the 911Day.org event at San Francisco State University. For Caviness, who’s married with three children, the anniversary of Sept. 11 is a time of mixed emotions. There is grief for her co-workers whose lives were cut short. And there is gratitude for a scheduling mistake that allowed her to build the life she has. The two emotions have learned to coexist. “I’m really grateful for what I have that they never were able to have,” she said. “And I acknowledge I got that chance.” ...read more read less