by Jim Defede
For the past three decades Gander has remained a frequent stopover point for private and corporate jets. Celebrities and CEOs of major corporations have visited the airport’s DVL—Distinguished Visitors’ Lounge—before continuing on their trip to Cannes or London or Rome. Airport employees have grown used to seeing folks like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Lee Iacocca, John Travolta, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, or Tom Cruise. In the last twenty years, at least twenty-five heads of state have passed through Gander.
At the start of the new millennium, Gander’s civic pride in aviation matters rested on the airport’s designation a few years before as an alternate site for the Space Shuttle to land if it has to abort its mission shortly after takeoff. And now, on September 11, for the same reason it was considered a suitable landing site for the Space Shuttle—it has an unusually long main runway—Harold O’Reilly knew it would be the ideal place to handle a sky full of jumbo jets with nowhere to land.
The irony of the situation was not lost on O’Reilly. The very same planes that had rendered Gander’s airport largely obsolete were now going to be forced to seek shelter there.
The television set in Gander’s town hall didn’t have cable. The local stations had interrupted their regular programming for bulletins out of New York, but the reception wasn’t very good. Nevertheless, town employees gathered around and gazed in horror. Mayor Elliott watched for a few minutes and then decided to go home, where he could follow the coverage on CNN.
Inside his house, he stared at his television in absolute disbelief. As the towers became engulfed in flames, he kept glancing at the word LIVE in the corner of the screen. This wasn’t some movie, he thought to himself, this was actually happening right now. Before long, Elliott received a phone call from the town manager. Officials at the airport had called. U.S. airspace was closed and a lot of planes were being diverted to Canada. It looked like Gander was going to be receiving a sizable portion of them, perhaps as many as fifty planes.
“What about the passengers?” Elliott asked.
For now, he was told, the plan was to allow the jets to land, but to hold all of the passengers on board until U.S. airspace opened up again and the planes could take off. They would probably be on the ground for only a few hours.
Elliott knew better. Watching events unfold on his television, he could see that the United States was in a state of chaos. The whereabouts of the president were unclear. The American military was mobilizing. Nobody seemed to have an understanding of what was happening. This was obviously going to take time to sort out, certainly more than a few hours. The mayor then started doing the math. If there were fifty planes en route, with an average of 250 passengers and crew members on each plane, they could easily have more than 12,000 people landing in Gander in the next few hours. Even if they never got off the plane, just having to feed that many people would be a tremendous undertaking for a town the size of Gander.
Elliott didn’t want to get caught flat-footed. The town needed to start getting ready in case the passengers were going to be stranded there overnight. The town opened its emergency operations center—a room inside town hall—and started contacting local groups to place them on alert that it might need their assistance.
Geoff Tucker was already making preparations at the airport. He’d worked at Gander International for nineteen years and was now the vice-president of the local airport authority. With the airport director out of town for a conference, Tucker was the man in charge.
He was alerted to the attacks in New York by Bruce Terris, the supervisor up in the airport’s tower. Right away Tucker knew the ripple from such a catastrophe would find its way to Gander. “The lifeboat of the North Atlantic” is the way he always referred to Gander International. Every pilot who flies to the United States from Europe knows exactly where Gander is located. If there is a serious mechanical problem over the ocean or a passenger has a heart attack or goes berserk with a case of air rage, the pilot makes an emergency landing in Gander.
After receiving the call from the tower, Tucker met with the head of the local detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the commander of the Canadian military base in Gander, as well as local and federal government officials. They all knew an onslaught was about to hit them. The RCMP and the central government in Ottawa were adamant, though: the planes could land, but nobody would be allowed off.
O’Reilly was amazed at how calmly his controllers were handling the situation. Their first task was to contact all of the planes currently heading for the United States. During that first hour not all of the pilots had heard about the attack, and controllers were told to tell pilots only that “a crisis” in the United States had forced the government to close down its airspace. The pilots had the choice of turning around and returning to Europe or landing in Canada.
Even if pilots asked questions about the events in New York, the controllers were told not to discuss the attack with them. They weren’t there to provide news updates or answer questions or knock down rumors, their only concern was to get the planes safely on the ground. The truth was that the controllers weren’t the best source for information anyway. The pilots had access to commercial radio stations, while the controllers were working the screens.
Dwayne Puddister, a controller for ten years, was working “high altitude,” meaning planes above 28,000 feet. By the time they came into his territory, most planes were already committed to landing in Canada, so Puddister didn’t offer them a lot of options.
“There is a crisis in the United States and airspace is closed,” he’d say. “You can land in either St. John’s or Gander. You have thirty seconds to decide. After that, I’ll decide for you.”
Less than a minute later Puddister would come back to them.
“Have you made up your mind?”
If the pilot tried to stall, Puddister would make the decision.
“You’re instructed to land…” And then he’d fill in the blank. The word “instruct” carries a lot of weight in the vernacular of pilots and air-traffic controllers. As a matter of civility, pilots and controllers normally use the word “request.” When a controller uses the word “instruct,” it’s the same as an order. A pilots who refuses to comply can lose his license.
One pilot of a private jet, after being given a choice between Gander and St. John’s, started arguing with Puddister, telling the controller he wanted to press ahead to his original destination in the United States. The pilot was flying a Gulfstream V, one of the most expensive and luxurious corporate jets ever made. It was clear to Puddister that the pilot wasn’t aware of the attacks in New York and Washington.
“You will not be going to the United States today,” Puddister said. “You are instructed to land in St. John’s.”
“You have no idea,” the pilot argued. “We have well-to-do people on board.”
“You have no idea,” Puddister shot back. “I don’t care who you have on board. You’re going to be landing in St. John’s. Now I have no time to deal with your foolishness.”
Fellow controller Reg Batson was even more blunt with the pilots.
“Anyone trying to enter U.S. airspace,” he warned, “will be shot down.”
Batson was juggling ten times the number of aircraft on his screen that he’d have under normal conditions. As a result, he urged the pilots to stay alert. Broadcasting on a channel for all of the pilots entering his airspace, Batson confided his concern and made an unusually frank request.
“There’s a lot happening,” he told the pilots, “and it’s going to be hard to keep track of all of you. Pay attention to your proximity alarms,” he continued, “and keep looking out your windows for other aircraft.”
Pilots were on their own as to what they would tell their passengers. They could lie and announce they were landing in Canada because of minor mechanical problems; they could say one of the passengers was ill and they needed to land at the nearest airport for medical reasons; or they could tell the truth.
Thirty minutes after asking for guidance from Lufthansa’s base in Frankfurt, Captain Knoth still hadn’t heard back from anyone. While he continued to wait, Knoth summoned the plane’s chief purser into the cockpit to brief him about the attacks in New York and Washington. He told the purser not to discuss what was happening with any of the other flight attendants, and to certainly keep the news from the passengers. They were still almost two hours from Canada and Knoth didn’t want to spark a panic, or worse, provoke any terrorists who might have been on board. He ordered the purser to barricade the spiral staircase leading to the cockpit and the first-class section of the plane. He told him to use the food-and-beverage carts to block the access to the stairwell and lock them in place. It wouldn’t stop a determined hijacker for long, Knoth thought, but it would slow him down and give the crew a chance to react.
By the time Lufthansa Flight 400 reached the halfway point across the Atlantic, Knoth still hadn’t heard from Frankfurt. He made the decision on his own: he was going to continue west rather than turn around. Knoth contacted Gander’s air-traffic control center for clearance to fly on to Toronto’s airport. Lufthansa had a large base of operations in Toronto, and Knoth assumed they’d best be able to serve the passengers who would likely be stranded for several days.
“Request denied,” the controller in Gander said bluntly. “You have to land now.”
The controller gave him his options—all in Newfoundland. Through a bizarre coincidence, Knoth happened to have spent time in a flight simulator several months earlier making emergency landings. One of the airports he practiced for was Gander International. And like most transatlantic pilots, Knoth carried maps in his flight bag showing the layout of the airport and its runways.
“We’ll take Gander,” he said.
A little before 11 A.M. local time, Virgin Air Flight 75, on its way from Manchester, England, to Orlando, Florida, became the first diverted airplane to land in Gander. The plane circled the town, came in low from the northeast, and landed on Runway 22. Aboard were 337 passengers, most on their way to a family vacation in Disney World.
The plane taxied to the terminal and stopped. A small contingent of police took up points around the plane as passengers stared out the windows. A movable staircase, used to remove passengers from the plane, remained untouched, just out of sight of the aircraft.
CHAPTER THREE
Brooklyn’s Rescue 2 (Kevin O’Rourke is the second from the right).
Courtesy of the O’Rourke family
Roxanne Loper lurched forward as the pilot of Lufthansa Flight 438 cut his speed and made a hard right turn. As the plane dramatically slowed, she grabbed her husband’s hand to steady herself and then reached for two-year-old Alexandria, still asleep on the floor of the plane. She scooped the child into her arms and wondered what was happening. Was it bad weather? An air pocket? Was there something mechanically wrong with the plane?
On the back of the seat in front of her a small television displayed the aircraft’s speed and projected path from Frankfurt to Dallas. Roxanne watched as the numbers indicating the plane’s airspeed dropped from 600 mph to almost 300 mph. She could also see that they were no longer on their original course. Rather than heading west, they were now tracking due north, away from the United States. They were still over the Atlantic, but the pilot seemed to be heading for the nearest available point on the map. Roxanne could feel her heart racing. Was the pilot trying to reach land? Was he was afraid of crashing into the water?
Although it felt much longer, within a few seconds the pilot came over the loudspeaker. He spoke in German and Roxanne couldn’t discern much from the tone of his voice. Then she heard the passengers who could understand him audibly gasp. This made her even more frightened. Finally, in somewhat broken English, the pilot announced that airspace over the United States was closed and he had been ordered to land in Gander, Newfoundland. He offered no further explanation.
“We’ll be on the ground in thirty minutes,” he said.
An older gentleman sitting in front of Roxanne turned to her. He seemed confused. In all his years of traveling, he said, he’d never heard of the United States closing its airspace. “Never,” the man kept saying. “Never.”
Throughout the plane, strangers talked to one another, nervously speculating about what might be occurring. Some asked if there could have been a plane crash in the United States. But that didn’t make sense. The government had never shut down the entire aviation system when there was an accident. It must be something worse.
A bomb? But that, too, would affect only one plane.
An attack? Could the United States be under attack? My God, what kind of attack? And from whom? Passengers began imagining the worst. They asked the flight attendants for more information. The attendants swore they knew nothing else. Murmured prayers rolled through the plane.
Roxanne’s husband, Clark, was now holding Alexandria. It had been only six days since their adoption of the girl became final. After months of wrangling their way through the bureaucratic maze of adopting a child overseas, Roxanne had thought the worst was behind her. Now she was uncertain about what lay ahead.
So much in her life had already changed—she couldn’t help but think back on it all. Had it really been fifteen months since she first saw Alexandria’s picture on the Internet?
After trying unsuccessfully to have a child of their own, they decided to adopt one. Roxanne was searching various adoption Web sites when she came across one for World Partners and spotted Alexandria, who was then only nine months old. There was something about this baby that was special to Roxanne, a connection she hadn’t felt before.
When the couple contacted World Partners, they discovered Alexandria was no longer available. Undeterred, they continued talking to the counselors at the adoption agency and decided to provide a home for another child, a three-month-old baby they would name Samantha. Like Alexandria, Samantha had been born in Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia populated by people of Mongolian and Turkish descent.
Most Americans who traveled this far to adopt a child usually went to Russia or Romania so they could find a “white” baby, one that would look like them. Roxanne and Clark were different. They chose Kazakhstan because they didn’t care if their adoptive child’s skin was a different color from their own. They were just looking for a child to love. And it didn’t matter how far they had to go to find one.
To be sure, Kazakhstan is a long way from their home in Alto, Texas, population 1,053. Roxanne, twenty-nine, and Clark, thirty-three, own an 850-acre ranch outside the East Texas town, located about two hours southeast of Dallas. They have horses, chickens, cows, and a few hundred acres of pine, which they plan on foresting.
In June 2000, the couple made the arduous journey to Kazakhstan to adopt Samantha. They spent nearly a month in the country, and when it was all over and they arrived home with the baby, the adoption had cost them almost $25,000.
And then, early in 2001, Roxanne was scrolling through the Web site for World Partners and once again saw Alexandria’s picture. The child was older, but Roxanne had no doubt that it was her. She contacted the agency and learned it was indeed the same child she’d seen a year earlier. She had no idea why Alexandria was suddenly now available, nor did she care. She told Clark it was time Samantha had a sister.
They scraped together the rest of their savings and started the adoption process all over again. On August 18, they flew from Dallas to Frankfurt and then on to Samara, Russia, an industrial center five hundred miles southeast of Moscow. From there they spent six hours traveling by car along bumpy roads across the Ural Mountains into Kazakhstan, a country whose southern border is less than two hundred miles from Afghanistan.
Located in the to
wn of Uralsk, the orphanage was known simply as Baby House Number Two. The orphanage was an industrial-looking building with a forbidding black gate in front, and was surrounded by a barren dirt field where the children would play. Despite the ominous facade, the government facility was clean and the children well cared for. There were about eighty kids in this particular orphanage, ranging in age from newborns to four-year-olds.
They arrived in Uralsk at four in the morning on August 20, and checked into a run-down hotel near the baby house. For the next fourteen days, they would visit the orphanage and spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon playing with Alexandria so the child would get to know them. Alexandria instantly loved Clark but couldn’t stand Roxanne. Whenever they arrived, she would run to Clark and throw a fit if Roxanne tried to hold her.
On September 5, the couple flew across Kazakhstan to the city of Almaty for a court hearing to have the adoption finalized. The child was turned over to them, and on September 9 they all flew to Moscow. The United States requires couples adopting children in Kazakhstan to present themselves at the American embassy in Moscow so the child can receive a physical from an American doctor and a visa to travel.
They left Russia on September 11 at 3 A.M. for Frankfurt, arriving in time for their connecting flight to Dallas. They weren’t the only couple on board Lufthansa Flight 438 bringing home a Kazakh orphan.