In November, 2001, I flew in a Fairchild Dornier 328JET from Columbus to LaGuardia Airport, in New York City. We passed by lower Manhattan where the World Trade Towers had been destroyed in a terrorist attack less than two months before.
After a night in my son's apartment, I went on aboard an Alitalia 747-200 to Fiumicino Airport (Rome). where I changed to an Alitalia MD-82 to Catania in Sicily. A car took me to the Bay Palace Hotel below Taormina. where I stayed for most of a week.
I then took the train to Siracusa, where I stayed for another week in the Hotel Roma in Ortigia, the island which was Greek Syracuse. At the end of that time I was driven back to Catania and returned to the United States via Fiumicino.
This time my transatlantic flight was in an Alitalia 767. We landed on the runway from which an American Airlines A300-600 had departed a few days earlier, in the opposite direction. The Airbus lost its vertical stabilizer and rudder over the bay. The scars of its descent were visible below us as we approached Kennedy Airport.