With hundreds of planes in the air on 9/11, Canada had minutes to respond

ST. JOHN’S — As hijackers slammed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York City 25 years ago, there were hundreds of other aircraft in the sky. The usual round of early flights had taken off from Europe, carrying thousands of passengers over the western half of the North Atlantic region, off the Canadian coast.

David Collenette was speaking to a crowd at an international conference of airport executives in Montreal when a staff member slipped him a note saying there’d been a tragedy and he had to wrap up his speech. Then Canada’s transportation minister, he raced back to Ottawa as hijackers slammed a third plane into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

When the United States shut down its airspace that morning, there were about 500 planes in the air over the western North Atlantic, with an estimated 85,000 people on board, Collenette said in a recent interview. A plane was entering Canadian airspace every 90 seconds, he said.

“We had to make a decision on the spot,” Collenette said. “We had no hours. This was minutes.”

On Thursday, Collenette will be in Gander, N.L., where 38 planes landed on Sept. 11, 2001, and the town of about 9,000 people dropped everything to care for some 6,500 passengers stranded there for days. He’ll be sharing his story at an event called “Untold Stories” at the Gander International Airport, ahead of a 9/11 commemoration ceremony on Friday.

The event is among many planned across Canada to remember the nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and to honour the unquestioning support Canadians offered to their American allies.

“We’re there for a solemn reason, but we’re also there to celebrate the goodwill of Canadians,” Collenette said. “It just showed that Canadians could all come together.”

Back in Ottawa on Sept. 11, 2001, it was immediately clear that Canada had to shut down its airspace, too, the former minister said. Officials had to tell about 270 planes to turn around and go back across the Atlantic to Europe.
The remaining planes — more than 230 — had to land somewhere fast, Collenette said. Many were directed to Atlantic Canada, where there are several Second World War-era airports with large runways, he said. Others were sent to large, central cities such as Montreal and Vancouver.

Collenette said he is still struck by how quickly people across the aviation community and the country worked together to land all the planes and keep all their passengers safe.

“Nobody disputed the orders given by our air traffic controllers to return to Europe or to land in Gander, N.L., or Stephenville, N.L., or Moncton, N.B., or Halifax,” he said.


“And nobody at the time said, ‘Look, we got all these people, it’s gonna cost a lot of money,'” he added. “That’s what the remarkable thing was. People … opened their homes. They opened their fridges. They cooked. They donated.”

Gander’s story stands out because of its size, he said: the town’s population almost doubled when all those planes landed, and every person was taken care of. But people across Canada took care of stranded passengers, just as people in Gander did, he said.

In Toronto, the U.S. Consulate is hosting an exhibition of pen-and-ink drawings by Canadian artist John Coburn, which he created at Ground Zero and throughout New York City following the 9/11 attacks. The show is called “25 Years of Healing Hearts: A Tribute to 9/11 in Drawings.”

In British Columbia, a cross-border memorial ceremony is planned on Friday at the Peace Arch border park in Surrey. Expected guests include New York police officers, a firefighter and paramedic who served on 9/11. U.S. Homeland Security helicopters are scheduled to do a flypast.

Organizers say they expect hundreds of Canadian and American first responders, and military and border officers to attend.

The International Peace Garden in Manitoba is also holding a memorial event with officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol and the Canada Border Services Agency. North Dakota Parks and Recreation representatives are also expected, alongside members of the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2026.

Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press