On the morning of September 11, 2001, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was scheduled to fly from Boston to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11. However, he arrived at the airport late, in part because of a hangover from the night before and because his travel agent mistakenly told him that the 7:45 a.m. flight was leaving at 8:15 a.m. instead. MacFarlane ended up missing the plane by roughly ten minutes and had to wait for the next flight. He then headed to the airport lounge, where he took a short nap.
Upon awakening 45 minutes later to some commotion, MacFarlane learned that the flight he had missed had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everybody on board. He’d called his assistant to tell him he was taking a different plane, but the message wasn’t received until 20 minutes after everything happened, leaving people thinking that MacFarlane had been killed in the crash.
When MacFarlane informed the bartender in the airport lounge that he was supposed to be on the flight in question, the man poured him a shot on the house. MacFarlane later said that he sent his travel agent a basket of booze as a thank you since she was the one who essentially saved his life.
Seth MacFarlane Missed One of the 9/11 Flights Because of a Hangover and a Travel Agent’s Mistake
Although MacFarlane was initially rattled by the situation, he’s reiterated several times over the years that he’s not a fatalist and acknowledges that things like that probably happen more often than we’d like to think, just on a much smaller scale. During a 2004 interview with The New York Times, MacFarlane said, “I think I still pretty much approach everything the same way. There are probably 100 close calls for all of us every year, and we don’t even realize it.” He went on to say, “Maybe one day the whole thing will really hit me.”
MacFarlane would eventually make several references to both 9/11 and Osama bin Laden on Family Guy, including in the controversial 2011 episode “Back to the Pilot.” Brian travels back in time and prevents 9/11, which in turn causes much worse problems. He and Stewie then decide to go back and fix the issue by allowing 9/11 to happen all over again. Eerily, there was even a bin Laden airport gag in 2000’s “Road to Rhode Island” that was removed from the original DVD release.
You can check out the deleted sequence right here:
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