Welcome to Defiance

On the morning of 9/11, in the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon strike, the United States made the almost unthinkable decision to ground every aircraft in its airspace. In just over two hours, 5,000 planes landed safely across the country, at major airports and at hundreds of small regional facilities that hadn't handled a commercial aircraft in years.

A drama inspired by the extraordinary feats of professionalism that took place that morning, drawn from extensive research. At its centre is David Berg, an air traffic controller alone in the tower of a small, long-dormant airport, who receives the order and has to make it real with no radar, one man on the ground, and ten commercial aircraft already on their way to him.

Welcome to Defiance follows the controllers, pilots, ground crew and ordinary airport workers who kept the system together on the most catastrophic day in American aviation history.

Cast:

Berg . . . . . David Menkin
Mark . . . . . John Christopher Benson
Other parts played by: Jasmine Hyde, Khalid Laith, Clare Corbett, Sam Swann, Sam Dale, Clive Hayward, Sasha McCabe and Django Bevan.

Production Co-ordinator: Ben Hollands
Sound Design: Sharon Hughes
Writer: Adrian Penketh
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

A BBC Studios production for Radio 4.