GROUNDED: Some of the aircraft that were forced to land at Gander International Airport on 9/11 (Image: Gander Airport Authority)
IF YOU'VE flown to America via the polar route, you may have spotted the town of Gander on the moving map that charts your plane's progress. In all honesty, there's not much to get excited about - 9,651 people, 4,000 homes, 500 hotel rooms, seven sets of traffic lights and the occasional stray moose in the road. But a musical that's just opened in London's West End paints a magical picture of Gander which led one theatre critic to write: "You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll be a better person when you leave the theatre."
When the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11 in 2001, air travel across North America was disrupted. Hundreds of planes heading for cities in the United States were diverted to anywhere with a runway big enough to take them.
Thirty-eight big jets carrying a total of 7,000 passengers from 95 countries - plus several cats, dogs and a pair of chimpanzees en route to a zoo - were forced to land at Gander International Airport that fateful day and the musical Come From Away tells the uplifting story of how the people of Gander took them to their hearts.
Ingenuity ranked alongside compassion. The genial, if harassed, mayor commandeered the local ice rink to act as a giant fridge for fresh food and three meals a day were conjured up for the visitors, some of whom had to stay in Gander for up to four days.
Everyone in the town got busy and the local air traffic controllers cooked chilli. Spare clothes were found, makeshift beds were made up, people of all faiths and none prayed together during the dark hours of uncertainty.
REAL LIFE: Pilot Beverley Bass (Image: Beverley Bass)
People started offering rides, showers and telephone time and many emptied their linen closets to find sheets, towels, pillows and blankets. Stores donated toothbrushes, nappies and underwear and school bus drivers suspended a strike to help out.
When the time finally came to leave and continue their journeys, some of the "plane people", as the locals called them, were bitterly upset. Some had fallen in love. Some wanted to stay. All had deep-rooted reasons to be eternally grateful to Gander for the warmth of its hospitality.
They had struck lucky in landing at the town which is located on the north-eastern shore of Lake Gander in Newfoundland. As an important refuelling stop for transatlantic airliners, the airport was once the largest in the world and in 2001 was still a preferred emergency landing point for aircraft with onboard medical or security issues.
During the Second World War, Gander became a strategic post for the Royal Air Force Air Ferry Command, with an estimated 20,000 American and Canadian-built fighters and bombers stopping there on their way to Europe.
Gander's population: 9,651 (Image: Alamy Stock Photo)
To this day, most of the streets in Gander are named after famous aviators, including Alcock and Brown, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker and Chuck Yeager.
In the traumatic hours after 9/11, however, no one cared much about the street names or Gander's past role in aviation.
All the plane people wanted was security, safety and reassuring arms around them. Many of them were stranded for 30 hours, on planes that were kept on taxiways away from the airport terminal for fear of further terrorist attacks.
So it wasn't until the day after 9/11 that most of them got their first taste of Gander's hospitality and after having no contact with the outside world they slowly tried to come to
