20 years after 9/11: the stranded von Gander

Gander/New York. She was just flying from Paris to Dallas, her husband and two small children were waiting for her in the American homeland, when the news reached Beverley Bass: There had been an attack in New York. US airspace will be closed. You have to land in Gander, a small Canadian town on the island of Newfoundland. At first they are not told much more.

The pilot can still remember that day well, even if it was 20 years ago. It was September 11, 2001 when terrorists in the USA hijacked several aircraft and steered them into the World Trade Center in New York, among other places. The then 49-year-old, the first female captain of an American Airlines passenger flight, was in the air herself, piloting her plane in the direction of Dallas.

Beverley Bass didn’t arrive in Dallas until days later

She didn’t arrive there until days later, as the woman with the short white hair tells us today. “I was in the middle of the North Atlantic when we got the news that the Twin Towers had been hit,” she told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). “We didn’t know any details, we didn’t know that the plane had been hijacked.” After some back and forth, the landing in Gander was ordered – “We landed in a place with 9400 inhabitants, with almost 7000 passengers.” Because not only the Bass machine was diverted there, but also another 38 transatlantic flights.

The diversion was part of the so-called “Operation Yellow Ribbon”, the aim of which was to be able to remove potentially dangerous aircraft from American airspace as quickly as possible by landing them at Canadian civil and military airports, where their potential destructive power would be better could have been controlled. However, in the end, none of the aircraft posed any danger.

Long hours of waiting and uncertainty

What followed in Gander for Bass and around 7,000 other people were long hours of waiting – the crews and passengers had to be distributed and accommodated on site with school buses. “We ended up being on the plane for 28 hours before we could get off,” recalls Bass. They had already been in the air for seven hours at the time of landing, and a further 21 were added in Gander before they were allowed to leave the plane and the stranded people were distributed across the city.

While the pilot did her job, helped with the organization, at the time hardly knew anything about the terrorist attacks, her family remained in the dark. At that time there were no cell phones, and it was only about nine hours after the incidents that she could reach her husband and children, then nine and ten years old. “All schools were closed after the attacks and my husband drove to school to pick up the children,” says Bass, reconstructing the events that took place at home away from their plane.

The children immediately noticed that something was wrong because the father, who worked 45 minutes away from their school in Dallas, rarely picked them up, and then in the morning too. “You were very upset. They knew that I had flown, but had no idea where I was, ”says the 69-year-old with this good-natured manner. Her voice is always friendly and warm, even when she reports on the disturbing events.

Pilot about her family: “It was a long day for you, much longer than for me”

The attacks began around 8:45 a.m. New York time, an hour earlier in Dallas. Bass was only able to reach her family around 4.30 p.m. in the afternoon. “It’s been a long day for her, much longer than it was for me,” said the pilot, who has been flying two private individuals in a jet since retiring from American Airlines. “I had to do my job, I knew where I was and knew that we were fine.” Her family, however, was very worried about her. “We only saw the images of the attacks on television around 30 hours after the events, while the rest of the world had already seen the images hundreds of times,” recalls Bass. You were one step behind the rest of the world. And at the same time so close to the events.

Because what happened to the pilots and flight attendants, whose machines were hijacked by the terrorists, could have happened to them too. It changed everything. “It’s not something we’ve ever been prepared for in our careers,” says Bass. “Everyone was defenseless.” The processes have changed drastically since then, all cockpit doors were made bulletproof and would never be left open during the flight.

She was “never” afraid of flying – “never”

Bass herself reacted almost defiantly to the events: “Never” answered the question whether she was ever afraid of flying afterwards. “I never wanted to let these terrible guys ruin what I love so much.” After the attacks, however, she noticed an uneasiness among the passengers, everyone eyed everyone somehow, anxiously on the lookout for suspects. But she didn’t let herself get down. “I was never afraid to get on a plane,” she emphasizes, and adds another “never”.

So she wanted to continue working immediately after the five days in Gander, after which she finally flew back to Dallas. She refused to object to her employer to take a few days off after the events. “I returned straight away.” But not all of them were as strong as she was: “We had flight attendants who never flew again,” said Bass.

The stranded in Gander were stuck for five days

After the attacks, she spent five days in Gander with around 7,000 other stranded people. While some passengers mingled with the people there, lifelong friendships and a love story emerged, Bass stayed most of the time near their motel, where the crew was accommodated, while many of the passengers stayed in schools and churches. She didn’t want to move too far away because she always wanted to be on call for a return flight home. She learned of many of the stories later, when she returned to Gander.

Bass did it six times, as she says. Once about the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, where she spoke about her experiences with the authors of the musical “Come from Away”. The musical has been telling the story of the stranded in Gander since 2015 in performances all over the world – since September 10, a recording of it can now also be seen as a film on Apple +. Bass herself has watched the musical an incredible 158 times since 2015, she says. She herself is a character in it, embodied by an actress. When she and her husband saw her own story on stage for the first time, it was “very strange,” she admits. “It’s very surreal.” But it was never uncomfortable or embarrassing, just emotional – “it somehow brought it all back”.

Visit to Gander on the 20th anniversary is canceled due to a pandemic

The pilot took a trip into the past a few years ago with her now grown-up children and returned to Gander with them. “I wanted my kids to know where I was on that historic day,” she says. Also this year, on the 20th anniversary, she was supposed to return to the Canadian town with other people who were stranded in Gander at the time. The hotels were already reserved, but the pandemic is thwarting them. Visiting this place, which became known as the 9/11 sideshow, will have to wait until the next Memorial Day.

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