DALLAS — There is hardly a quiet moment at DFW International Airport, but on Ken Capps' first day of work, the airport fell silent. It was September 11, 2001.
"It's a day that you'll never forget," said Capps. "The silence was deafening." He was the former Vice President of Public Affairs for the airport.
Capps, now retired, said he was offered the job on September 10, 2001. He didn't accept it yet.
But on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, he watched the news unfold from the World Trade Center in New York. Immediately, Capps said he hung up his American flag at home, put on a suit, and drove to DFW International Airport.
"When I got here about 10 in the morning, it was sheer pandemonium," Capps recalled.
He hadn't negotiated his salary or signed a contract yet, but Capps said he was brought in a room to sign life insurance papers.
"It was very, very scary because nobody knew if [the attacks] were over yet."
After signing the life insurance, his hardest day of work began.
The national airspace was immediately shut down. Capps remembers 400 planes grounded at DFW. In 2001, it was already the third busiest airport in the world.
Capps and his team had to clear around 175,000 people from the airport.
"The first thing we did was open up the toll plaza, both entry and exit, so people could just get in their cars and leave," Capps said.
There were no rental cars left in the lot. Hotels nearby were fully booked.
On the evening of September 11, 2001, he remembers, "I was standing in Terminal C and the automatic doors opened in the terminal. And it was just a wind that was blowing through the terminal. That was the only sound. There were no people. There were no announcements. There was nothing."
It was the first time DFW International Airport was empty since it opened in 1974. Flights didn't resume for three days.
Before the 9/11 attacks, Capps said, 'It was pretty easy to go through security." Non-passengers could accompany friends and family to the gates. People only needed to arrive a few minutes before their flight. There was little to no security or restrictions.
The attacks changed air travel in the United States.
"A lot of changes that you see today that are still in place 23 years later started right here at DFW," Capps said.
Identification and boarding passes being required at the checkpoint, shoes off and pockets emptied, liquid limitations and full body scans were all changes that came following 9/11.
"This is the norm now," Capps said.
9/11 was a realization that there is no room for error when it comes to safety.
"The airports around this country and around the world still have to be on guard," he said.
After 23 years, Capps is reminded of the thousands of lives lost, and the country that was changed after the attacks.
"I can remember that day, like I'm still standing here."