09/14/2026
Amazing for a country that is such a blood-sucking burden for the USA...
In 2001, Gander, Newfoundland was a town of roughly 9,000 people. On the morning of September 11, it was about to become an unlikely refuge for nearly that many strangers.
When American airspace shut down entirely following the terrorist attacks, dozens of international flights already in the air over the Atlantic had nowhere left to go. Gander International Airport, a relic of the propeller-plane era once used as a refueling stop before jets could fly nonstop across the ocean, still had one of the longest runways in North America. Air traffic control diverted 38 wide-body jets there within hours, along with several more to other Newfoundland communities.
Roughly 6,700 passengers and crew suddenly arrived in a town that had no way to house them in hotels, no infrastructure built for anything close to that number of visitors, and initially, no idea how long they'd be stuck.
The town didn't hesitate. Local schools, churches, community centers, and even a hockey rink were converted into makeshift shelters. Residents opened their own homes, cooked meals, donated clothing, and arranged transportation for people who had landed with nothing but the belongings in their carry-on bags. Local pharmacists worked to fill prescriptions for passengers who'd left medication behind. Bus drivers who were in the middle of a labor strike suspended it voluntarily to help move stranded travelers around.
For nearly three days, passengers who had been complete strangers to the town, and to each other, lived alongside Gander's residents while the world tried to make sense of what had happened. Many passengers didn't even know about the attacks until they landed, having taken off before the news broke.
The stranded travelers came to call themselves "the Plane People." Lasting friendships and, in a few cases, marriages, formed out of those few days. Passengers went on to raise money for scholarships in Gander in the years that followed, and many returned to visit the town that had taken them in.
