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Twenty-five years ago, the remote Newfoundland town of Gander found itself becoming an unlikely haven at the edge of the North Atlantic. In the wake of 9/11, more than 4,000 airborne flights were forced to divert when the Federal Aviation Administration closed American airspace—and 38 of those aircraft landed in Gander, bringing nearly 7,000 passengers and crew to a town of just 10,000 people.
Brian Mosher, a Gander resident and TV reporter, filmed practically non-stop in the days following September 11, in an attempt to share what was happening on the ground with the world. “There were 7,000 different reasons why people had to get home,” says Mosher. “We were their shoulders to cry on.”
The “come from aways,” the Newfoundland term for out-of-towners, were welcomed into the community with warmth, love, food, and anything else their hosts could provide. Buffet tables were set up to feed the new arrivals, and accommodation arranged in homes, schools, and churches. “We thought we’d give them a bite to eat before we put them back on their planes, not realizing they were going to have to stay here five days,” he says. The events of these confusing, confounding days went on to inspire a hit Broadway musical, Come From Away, with Ganderites immortalized in song.
Today, Gander International Airport feels smaller and sleepier than its reputation might suggest. Most travelers who find themselves here are on brief stopovers en route to or from other destinations in Newfoundland and Labrador. Others have made a special visit, drawn by the extraordinary architecture and design of the former International Departures Terminal, a Modernist time capsule dating back to 1959.
Gander Airport’s legacy actually far predates the events of 9/11–in fact, going all the way back to a time when global aviation was, literally, just taking off. It was the late 1930s, just three decades after Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flight took off from Kitty Hawk beach in North Carolina. With long-haul air travel underway, and Newfoundland’s location on the Great Circle Route—930 miles closer to Europe than anywhere else in North America—positioned Gander as the perfect staging point for refueling, maintenance, and emergencies at a time when flying was far more unpredictable and potentially unreliable than we know it to be today
The first plane to land in Gander touched down on a snow-packed runway in 1938. By 1940, it was already the world’s largest airport, and in World War II served as the main maintenance point for Allied aircraft flying to Europe. Eventually, Gander would go on to welcome commercial flights from Europe and the Soviet Union for refueling stops, but it couldn’t throw off its military past. Until 1959, arriving travelers still found themselves disembarking into a hangar designed for WWII.
