Captain Steeeve on Cheating Death After Almost Flying 9/11 Plane, 25 Years On
September 11, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readCaptain Steve Scheibner was supposed to be the first officer on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001. He had packed his bags, told his wife he was going to Los Angeles, and seen his name on the crew manifest. Then the phone never rang. A more senior pilot, Tom McGuinness, bumped him off the trip at the last minute. McGuinness died when the plane hit the North Tower. Scheibner spent the entire day on a Navy base, locked down and focused on contingency planning, without realizing he had been scheduled for the flight that was now a smoking hole in the World Trade Center. He only connected the dots that night, when he logged into the airline computer and saw the manifest screen he had looked at the day before — now replaced by the words “sequence failed continuity.” That moment, he says, “there’s still a place inside where a feeling belongs, and I don’t — it’s just empty.”
How one pilot’s ordinary schedule change became a matter of life and death
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:35) **Captain Steve Scheibner’s Escape from Flight 11** - How the pilot who was scheduled to fly the first 9/11 hijacking ended up not being on the plane.
- 2 (05:04) **Learning the Plane He Missed Was the First to Hit** - The moment Scheibner realized the flight he was supposed to be on was the one that struck the North Tower.
- 3 (08:50) **The Bizarre Phone Call from Scheduling on 9/11** - American Airlines called Scheibner on the afternoon of the attacks to assign him Flight 11 for the next day.
- 4 (11:33) **The Emotional Weight of Cheating Death** - How Scheibner and his wife processed the realization that he would have died.
- 5 (13:17) **Meeting Tom McGuinness’s Widow** - The awkward and heartbreaking conversation with the woman who lost her husband to the flight Scheibner was supposed to take.
- 6 (15:33) **Who Was Tom McGuinness?** - A brief portrait of the man who took Scheibner’s seat on Flight 11.
- 7 (16:23) **Getting Back in the Cockpit After 9/11** - The first flight Scheibner flew after the attacks was the same route he would have flown on 9/11.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Captain Steve Scheibner AKA Captain Steeeve was scheduled to fly one of the planes on 9/11. He joins Piers Morgan to share his extraordinary personal story of fate, the moment he realized what was happening, and his journey toward forgiveness 25 years later.
Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and sponsored by:
Coveron: One scam can cost you everything — protect yourself now, first 100 users get 20% off with code PIERS at https://coveron.com/piers
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:38 Narrowly avoiding piloting American Airlines Flight 11 on 9/11
00:04:28 Finding out the plane had crashed in to the World Trade Centre
00:10:53 Steve on telling his wife how he had cheated death
00:12:40 Speaking to the widow of Tom McGuinness
00:15:48 Steve on returning to flying
00:17:13 Has Steve forgiven the hijackers?
00:19:10 How did the hijackers pull it off?
00:23:03 9/11 conspiracy theories
00:25:10 President Bush staying airborne for his protection
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from this podcast
Piers Morgan Uncensored →