September 11th Heroes in Newfoundland: One More Reason I Love Canadians

I picked up the headset and held one side to my ear.  There was the voice—calm, methodical, every tone measured and precise.  In the Gander Aviation Museum I was listening to recordings of air traffic control. 

 

            “Delta one five heavy, this is YQX approach, squawk zero seven seven niner.”

            “United two two three heavy, this is YQX, descend to 5500 and hold for approach.”

            “American four six heavy, this is YQX, you are clear to land zero three.”

 

            The term “heavy” refers to a wide body airplane.  Air traffic control handles these by the dozen every day.  You would have thought it was any other day.  But it wasn’t.

            This was September 11, 2001, and the voice on that headset was calmly and confidently saving lives.

American airspace had been shut down.  Nineteen radical Islamist terrorist had hi-jacked four airplanes.  Two had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.  One had been flown into the Pentagon and another, probably heading for the White House, was brought down by the determined passengers on board who simply decided that they were their own last best hope. 

            What was going to be done with the 500 planes already in the air and en route to America?  Canada, who has had our back more than once, agreed to land the planes that could not return to their point of origin, diverting them away from the largest cities: Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.   But where do you set down a wide bodied jet?  Fortunately, one of the first airports trans-Atlantic flights come to happens to be more than adequate for the job.  Gander, Newfoundland has a runway built as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle.  Gander is also the air traffic control headquarters for all trans-Atlantic air traffic.  When US airspace went sterile, Gander had 370 airplanes that it was already monitoring in its two story bunker.  Don O’Brien and his crew set to work averting, diverting and landing planes throughout Canada. 

            Gander landed 37 “heavies” that day.  But that still left the problem of what does a poor community of just 10,000 people do with an unexpected 6,700 visitors?  The answer, evidently, is that you take them to your bosom. 

            People who left the planes were taken to shelters in the schools, churches and businesses.  When space ran out, they were taken to people’s homes.  They were handed home made lunches when they stepped off busses being driven by men who had been on strike, but came back for this service without being asked.  The “plane people,” as they came to be called, walked through buffet lines of home made food that had been hastily made that morning by the women now serving it up.  Pharmacists came to the shelters asking what people needed.  Medicines were provided, prescriptions filled, and no one would take a dime of for any of it. 

            Canada landed lots of planes that day.  Halifax landed more planes than Gander, Vancouver almost as many; people from around the world were treated well in each case.  But Gander is so small, and its heart so big, that it holds a special place in humanities honor roll.  Alan Flood, of Bristol, England, who was stranded with his wife, Barbara, summed up the feelings of hundreds of passengers when he said, “We were strangers. They didn’t know what we were like. They took us to their homes, made sure we wanted for nothing, treated us as part of the family.”

            When you go to Newfoundland, go to Gander, where they keep the faith.