I was on a business trip to Indianapolis and watched the whole thing unfold on a TV in our pharmaceutical division there. My wife, who happens to be a sheriff's deputy, our 17 year old son and two year old daughter were home in southern California. My brother in law routinely flew that American flight but just didn't happen to be on a business trip that week.
My wife was 8 months pregnant and was having some problems. She wound up in the hospital with early labor pains that day. Fortunately the hospital stabilized her and she didn't have the baby for another month.
My company reacted to the situation by telling everyone to just get home as best we could to be with family and put any expenses involved to accomplish such a task on our expense reports.
Stuck in Indy, with all flights grounded, Avis Car Rentals came to the rescue. They told us to just take the cars to wherever we needed to go, let them know where we were dropping the cars off and they would waive all one way rental charges. I'll never forget that lonely 2,000 mile drive home in that Daewoo Leganza (what a rattle trap!), especially driving at night. It was weird driving at night with no moving lights in the sky from jets.
Obviously the stress didn't help the drive, either.