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The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.
THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AI GENERATED AND WILL CONTAIN SOME SMALL ERRORS. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com. We understand the importance of good subtitles but currently as a one-person operation we just don't have the ability to edit these in a timely fashion and keep episodes coming out regularly. Thank you for your understanding!
All right, we're ready for departure. Here on the Pilot Project Podcast,
the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the
RCAF. Brought to you by Skies magazine and
RCAF today. I'm your host, Brian Morrison.
Today, to mark September 11, we'll be talking
with three air traffic controllers who were on duty that
day and through the following days. My first guest is
retired RCAF Air Traffic Controller Rob
Hogarth. Welcome to the show, Rob.
Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Before we get started, we'll go into Rob's bio.
Rob joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1983 as an air
navigator, and in 1986, he reclassified to the air
weapons controller career field. His postings
included Canada East and CFB North Bay, where he served as
a Weapons director, or WD, before upgrading
to Weapons Assignment Officer Wao. This
was followed by a tour to Fox main dueline site as
OPSO, and his first outCan posting, which was to the
8th Missile Warning Squadron at El Dorado Air Force
Station in Texas as a mission crew commander and chief of
Standards and evaluations. After his posting to
Texas, he returned to North Bay, initially as the operations
rep in Fighter Group Canadian NORAD Region HQ
Intelligence Office Then staying in North Bay. Rob was
assigned to the Canadian Air Defense Sector or CADS as a
combat ready mission crew commander MCC and
later to 22 Wing North Bay in the tactics
and training office. His next move was to the Northeast
Air Defense Sector, or needs in Rome, New York, as a
mission crew commander. For the listeners, a small note. I made a
pronunciation error here, and it is actually pronounced
NEADS, not Needs. Although not on duty the
morning of the 911 attacks, as a combat ready MCC at
Needs, he was a part of the team that helped to develop NORAD's
rapidly changing doctrine to face a previously
unforeseen threat. Rob retired on September
11, 2013, after slightly more than 30 years of
service to his hometown of Cambridge, Ontario, where he still
lives. So, Rob, uh, we always ask our guests, where did
aviation begin for you?
When I was a young child, I got taken to
an air show when I was about four or five years old
up at, what's, Waterloo? Wellington Airport.
And I got to see the early
stages of the snowbirds, the Golden
Sanitairs. Got to see fast
air for the first time with an F Four fandom.
And from there I was hooked. As I went
into high school, we had both the
London Air Show and the Hamilton Air Show, which were running
both of them in June at the time. So
I would go see those and see
everything from World War II
warbirds right through to
state of the art aircraft.
From there, I, uh, selected Ryerson in
the Aerospace Engineering program, and then it
just seemed logical to join the Air Force.
Yeah, it's funny, those are some of the same air shows that I grew
up seeing because we're from actually the same hometown
as we were kind of talking about before the show. And those are just great
air shows. I loved going to the London International Air Show.
Growing was, uh, it was a lot
of fun. It was amazing what you could see because
it was my first real introduction to static
air shows where you could actually go and talk to the
pilots and find out what it was like to
fly the various types of aircraft.
So what led you to change trades to the air weapons
controller trade?
Well, I started off as a navigator, but that
just wasn't where my skill set was.
I tried the school not once, but twice,
and I'm living proof that the system
works. I
wasn't successful in it. The NAV School
had and maintained a very high standard.
I didn't meet that standard. And after
two tries, I moved on to
air weapons control. And
to be honest, I had a lot more fun being an air
weapons controller than I think I ever would have as
a navigator. So it worked out better for
me and it worked out better for the RCAF.
Yeah, that sounds like a success story to me.
How did you get over the mental hurdle of,
okay, this didn't work out for me, but I'm not going
to let it sink me? How did you turn that into something
positive?
I think it started with the fact that about
two thirds of the way through the NAV School, I
was struggling and I was wondering if this
was the right choice for me. At the
time, the NAV school was leading to careers
in Auroras sea Kings
and Hercs. My interest had
always been in fast air combat
jets, predominantly.
So the transition to air weapons
control actually put me more where
my interests lay.
Can you explain what an air weapons controller is?
Air weapons control is the old
air defense, where we would
sit there in front of a computer screen that
takes radar feeds from all of our AOR.
An AOR is an area of responsibility.
Feeds it all into one computer.
We track every aircraft that crosses through
that radar picture. And if any aircraft
does anything wrong, an air weapons
controller would scramble fighter aircraft to go
up and intercept whatever the aircraft was
that was doing something wrong and
take action to correct that behavior.
It could be something as simple as a flight plan getting
lost. And so we have to go up and positively identify an
airplane. It could be a, uh,
Russian bomber flying off of our coast,
or it could be, in more recent times, something
similar to the attacks on 911.
We merged the career fields of air weapons
control, which dealt predominantly with
putting fire and steel on target, basically,
and then air traffic control
because we had very similar skill sets. We
both dealt with talking to aircraft,
making them go where we needed them to go,
and keeping safe while we're doing it.
So shifting gears and talking about the
topic of today's episode, where were you when you found
out that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center?
I had actually worked an evening shift the night before,
so I got off at midnight the night before,
and I had just started onto what I thought
was going to be days off.
So got off at midnight,
went home, got up the next
morning, grabbed a coffee. I was sitting in front of my
computer checking email or whatever,
and I had the radio playing in the background and
I heard that an airplane had hit the World Trade
Center. I looked out the window and it was a
beautiful, clear, blue sky
day. And I thought, how could a
pilot be so dumb that he doesn't see
one of the biggest buildings in Manhattan on a day when
the weather is clear in a million?
And then a little while later, we hear about
the plane hitting the South Tower. And then
I realized it wasn't a pilot who
was dumb. It appeared to be a
coordinated attack.
So you were off duty at the time. Were you
immediately recalled back in?
No, actually, exactly the
opposite. I called in and told the
mission crew commander who was on duty,
I can be there in five minutes if you need me.
And he said, no, we've got it.
For now, the best thing you can do is just stay
out of our hair because we're really busy.
Okay?
Yeah.
And I guess that way you'd be rested for your own following
shift.
Yeah, I got a phone call at about 11:00 in the
morning and was told, we're doing a
total unit recall. Everyone has to
report for duty. Your first task is
to immediately go to crew rest,
report at 06:00 this evening, uh, for at
least a twelve to 14 hours shift.
Okay. So what was it like when you first arrived
for work on the night of September 11?
It was kind of surreal.
As I pulled up to the entry control point, normally
we would show them our restricted area badge and
they'd wave us through. That night
we pulled up to the entry control point,
we had to show our restricted area badge,
military ID. And then they
went around the car with a mirror on a
stick and checked under the car to make sure that we weren't
carrying in some sort of an IED.
As I get to the entry control point, I
looked over my right shoulder, and there, on
the proverbial grassy knoll,
was a sandbagged bunker with
one of our security forces with a machine gun
pointed at the entry control point.
If someone had done something wrong, there's absolutely
no doubt in my mind that even though he knew us,
he would have taken actions to protect the
unit. Then, as I got into the
building, there were signs on the doors telling
the oncoming crew, do not go into the ops
room. Go to the break room. Before you go
into the ops room, the unit commander wants to
address you. So we gathered and
at this point we hadn't seen what was going on. We
didn't know how active the ops
room was. The
sector commander comes out to the break room
and he goes, okay, you're all here.
Before you go into the ops room, I want to let you
know we are, for all practical
purposes, in a state of war.
We control the skies over North America.
Nobody flies unless the Air Force says it can
fly. Uh, for all practical
purposes, it's a no fly zone over Washington,
DC. The only aircraft that are
airborne are military
aircraft, medevacs
and police helicopters. Nothing
else is authorized to get airborne in the DC
area. When you go into the ops
room, it'll be unlike anytime you've ever
done it in the past. Every
console will be manned. We
had what they call combat air patrols, or
Caps, over every major city in
the northeastern US. So
he was trying to mentally prepare us for what we were
about to see when we walked in.
What were your normal duties at that time?
Well, going in for a night shift, there might
be some training going on. Perhaps a squadron had
something that they needed to train that they couldn't get the
airspace during the day. Or maybe it was
something that they needed nighttime to train
to. So after the training was
done and any maintenance that needed to be
done, we basically just sat, ah, back
and monitored the air picture to look
for anything that one of my former bosses
referred to as the three DS. We were looking for
something dumb, dangerous or different.
And as long as nothing that met
those criteria happened, we just
sat there and monitored.
Okay.
And if something did happen, we would react
dynamically to that.
And on this night, as you went into the ops room,
how was it different from those normal nights?
Well, like I said, it was incredibly
busy. We had every
console was manned, most of them with
weapons team members, weapons directors and their
technicians. We had a couple extra
surveillance people, a couple extra identification
people on duty, and the
ops tempo was incredibly fast. Keep in
mind, at that time we only had a couple of
active NORAD air defense bases in each
sector. So we're trying to maintain
combat air patrols over. Well, in the
northeast we had, ah, seven different Caps
airborne at the same time. So each of those
would have a couple of fighters assigned to it, plus a
tanker, in order to keep it sustained.
So it was an
incredibly high ops tempo,
and we're working with units that maybe we hadn't worked
for. We had fighter units calling into our
battle staff and saying, I can give
you this number of fighters, I can give you
this type of fighters, and I can arm them in this
manner. Can we help? We had
tanker units calling and saying, hey, I
can get a KC 135 airborne
with this much offload. Where do you want
it? And so we were
just ad hoc. People were calling in,
trying to help us, and we were putting it
together. As assets became available,
we would look at the situation and go, where can
we use them? Um, and we'd send them to
wherever.
So it was something that was just constantly evolving.
Absolutely.
That night, there was so much going
on that information overload
became a real factor. We had all of our
fighter units. We had our region headquarters,
which was down in tyndall air force base. We
had NORAD headquarters, we had anyone
who needed to be there was on this trap.
So you'd spend your first hour working
the trap, building your situational awareness, uh,
finding out who was coming into the mission, who
was leaving the mission, when they were
airborne, when they were landing.
If it was someone who we needed to turn the jets around
and get them airborne again when they
were back onto status, all of that
thing, we would chat to everyone who was
using it. Then we'd go from there
to actually performing the MCC duty, where
you're reacting real time to the
evolving situation.
And after about an hour of
that, you were basically
done. So your next
hour would be, go, relax,
decompress, get ready. Because
at the end of that hour, you'd come back, you'd get a
turnover from whoever was working the chat, and you'd
sit right back down and start the chat again.
Yeah, it sounds really intense.
It was. And
especially because at the beginning, keep in mind,
NORAD had a philosophy that any
attack would come from abroad. We were thinking
in terms of pure nations,
to be blunt, probably russia
at the time. So
the concept of an attack coming from within
the shores of north america proper
was totally new to us.
Did you see your role or mission change in the days that
followed 911?
Yeah, initially, like I said, our,
uh, role prior to that was looking
outwards. So all of our radar picture was along the
coast. We didn't really have a lot
of radar coverage at the time in the center
of the country. So the first thing we
noticed is every time we came on duty, we were getting
access to more and more radars.
But, uh, the doctrine was changing
as well. Our rules of engagement were
changing. There was a term that I heard about
the second or third day after going in that
I'd never heard before in, at that point, about
15 years in the air force. And that was the
term a be no line. And during our
turnover briefing, the outgoing
MCC mentioned that the east
coast of the US. Was a be no
line. And I kind of raised my hand. I went,
uh, I've never heard that. What does that mean?
And he goes, there will be no air
force assets past the coast, over
water. The navy has
everything on the approaches to north
America. There will be no naval
assets, fighters, f, uh,
time over the landmass.
So that was something I had never heard before.
We also started changing our airspace
insofar as protecting
the Washington, DC. Area and
the procedures that go into that.
Our rules of engagement changed
from peacetime
through to wartime. And now
it started to include
contingencies that, uh, weren't
necessarily a part of our, uh, rules of engagement
before. So the first few days,
all of that changed, and it
was developed, for lack of a
better term, on the fly. That's not a really
good way to put it, but it's the best I can think
of. All the bureaucracy
disappeared we were using.
Does it make sense tactically, does it make sense
strategically, and can we actually make it
happen? And if we could answer yes
to all of those that became
our new doctrine, now, that might
change a couple of days later, but, uh, for
today, that was the step, and it was a very
iterative process.
And that's what happened in the first couple of
days.
Did you see anything or were you involved in any
specifically significant events through this?
Yeah, I was. There were a couple that were kind of
funny and a couple that were very
serious. A couple of days
after September 11, while we were
still working on our procedures,
and while the special
ops guys were working on their procedures
because they had their own mission to do,
there was an airplane flying in from, uh, I believe
miami, if I'm not mistaken, into Washington,
DC. And he
reported something unusual
to air traffic control.
Air traffic control then alerted us
and asked us if we had information on it.
And we never did find out exactly what it
was, but we believe to this
day, I'm convinced it was
a special ops team doing
a halo jump, the high altitude, low
opening parachute jump, because
an airplane at about
25,000ft had its
pilot report that he just had this
is an exact quote a dude in
a scuba suit just flew past his
cockpit. So it was probably a little
eye opening for the pilot of the airliner, but
probably a lot eye opening
for the guy doing the jump.
Yeah, no kidding.
So we just about had a midair collision between
some guy doing a halo jump and an
airliner. So that was one of the more
light hearted events. I wasn't on
duty the morning of the attacks, but I seemed to be on
duty when most of the other stuff happened in
the following time frame. Got a
call one Saturday about a month after September
11, and by this time, our
procedures were starting to get a bit more
concrete. And it
was, uh, about an airliner going from
London Heathrow to Miami.
And on board was somebody
who tried to light a bomb
in his shoe.
Oh, yeah.
Obviously, he wasn't successful. But we
scrambled fighters on that jet, uh,
intercepted it, and instead of going to Miami,
we diverted it into Boston.
So I was directly involved with the shoe
bomber. Another one that really sticks in
mind. Probably one of the closest that,
uh, I've personally ever come to being involved with a
shootdown was the
day that President Reagan's body was being flown
from California back to Washington to
Lion State at the Capitol,
we had fighters in a cap over
Washington. These particular fighters
were F 50 e's the Strike Eagles out
of Seymour Johnson. They hadn't
flown in the Washington cap before. So
they enter the cap, they put their radars into
ground mapping mode and try to get a feel for
where all the landmarks were. Well, one of
the restrictions in flying in that area
is you had to have a, uh, transponder
and be positively identified by air traffic
control. We had a target coming in
or a track of interest coming in doing about
100 and 3540 knots
that had no transponder.
So we committed one of the fighters out of the
cap. He went down. He identified it
as a Beach King Air, but he couldn't
get his radar out of ground mapping
mode and into any sort of an air to air
mode. So other than getting the
ID. He was essentially useless to
us. If it got
nasty, we could not have
engaged. So we sent him back
up to the cap because we couldn't use him for anything
else. And we started working through
the chain of command to get
authorization, if we needed it,
to use surface to air missiles which were now
surrounding Washington by this time.
But because the surface to air missiles are army
assets, they have different rules of
engagement set than we do with air to
air. So it has to leave the
NORAD rules of engagement chain
and go to a national chain. So
while they're working the authorization to
find out whether or not they'll be authorized to use
a surface air missile, it overflies one
of the surface air missile sites.
And the captain working at the site
got a tail number for us. And
the reason why we didn't shoot it down is because
somehow, over the years,
my mind has become a receptacle for
useless information. And when
the captain at the Sam site
gave us the tail number, it was
November 24 Sierra Papa
and I just screamed,
Sierra Papa. Tail numbers are reserved for
state police. It's a friendly.
Well, once we had the tail number, we were able to track
it back and find out that, yes, air Traffic
control actually did know who it was.
It was the governor of Kentucky trying to come into
Washington to get there before Reagan's
body did. Oh, my gosh. So we
had, at one point, a fighter sitting right
behind it. We were looking at whether or
not to engage it with a surface to air missile,
but the system worked. When we got a tail number, we
found out it was a friendly. And all of a
sudden, everyone breathed a sigh of relief
and just kind of, okay, let's go back to watching
the big picture. This guy's not a
threat.
Wow, that, uh, is crazy.
So you could go into work on any
given day, and it could be
incredibly boring. Not enough
coffee to keep you awake. Or you could
go in and it could be like the shoe bomber,
and you could wind up as breaking news on
CNN.
Back to 911. What effects did you notice this
had on the local community?
The big one was how the local community,
in particular the hospitality community,
pitched in for us. I don't know how, but
they knew we were working twelve to 14 hours
shifts. So we'd go into
work and all of a sudden food
would just show up. And you knew that the
restaurants were coordinating amongst each
other, because we never had food from
two restaurants show up at the same meal. But
every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight
snack, there'd be a delivery show up,
and there'd be enough for everyone who was on
duty. So, although the
details of what was going on were
never really common knowledge at the time,
they knew there was something going on, obviously,
because of what we do with there.
But, uh, the whole community chipped
in and did what they could to
feed us, to make sure that for the
people who had kids, made sure their kids were looked
after, because they were working long hours.
Even though they might not know why we were
there for so long, every day, they were
doing their best to take what load they could
off of our mind as far as extra things.
Wow.
That's really amazing.
Yeah, it was. And I've never seen a
community chip in like that before or
since.
How did this impact you personally, both in the short
term and for the rest of your career?
In the short term, we found we were leading kind of a
double life. We'd go into work and
we were on an incredibly high ops
tempo. And then when our shift was
over, we'd go out into the community
and the community at large, it was
largely back to normal.
We'd go home and we'd cut our grass,
we'd play with the dog. We'd amuse
kids. If you had kids
and then you'd go into work again and you were
at that high ops tempo and
it was a real hard transition in a lot of
ways and eventually we got used to that
level of ops tempo became
normal. So the
dichotomy wasn't as great after a while
in the long term.
Well, as you mentioned, my
retirement was September
11, 2013. So it
impacted me enough that I actually picked
the anniversary of the attacks for the day
that I retired. I
also put in a request that
my retirement flag would be
one flown over the Eastern air, uh, defense
Sector on September 11,
2011, the 10th anniversary of the
attacks. So both the flag
that I was presented at my retirement and my
retirement date were on anniversaries of
September 11.
So, obviously for you, this was a bit of a
defining set of events, a defining moment.
It really was. It was after,
like I said, after about 15 years in the Air
Force. I saw the way
tragedy brings out the absolute best in
people, and I truly
understood the concept of brothers in
arms. These are people who,
well, I would protect them with my life.
I would do anything for them. And
we had each other's backs both on duty and
off. I've been retired for almost
ten years, and, um, I'm still in touch with many of the people
who I worked with then.
It's amazing the bonds that you make serving. Like
you said, we really end up with brothers and sisters in arms,
people that you consider family. Okay, Rob,
that's going to wrap it up for our interview. I just wanted to thank you so much
for taking the time out of your day to be here with us
and sharing your experiences from a really
intense experience. So thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
Our second guest is retired RCAF Air Traffic Controller,
Shelley Coulter. Welcome to the show, Shelley.
Thanks for having me.
Shelley Coulter of Ottawa, Ontario, joined the Canadian Armed
Forces in 1990 as a direct entry officer. Having
already received her undergraduate degree in administrative law
from Carlton University, she served with a directorate
of air operations and training as a second Lieutenant before
proceeding to 22 Wing North Bay for training as an air weapons
controller or AWC at the Air Weapons Control
and Countermeasures School. In 1993,
after completing her training as an AWC, shelley was
employed with 21 Squadron, working with NORAD on Air
Sovereignty Operations. In 1994, she
was deployed to Vicenza, Italy, where she worked in the Combined Air
Ops Center as part of NATO's no fly zone over the former
Yugoslavia. Upon her return, Shelley
was promoted to Captain and transferred to 51 Operational Training
Unit in North Bay, where she took up the role of instructing new
weapons controllers. In 1996, Shelley went to
Cornwall to complete crossover training as AWC and
Air Traffic Controller ATC Trades Amalgamated and
was posted to CFB Cold Lake, Alberta as an ATC Tower
controller with Wing operations. In 1999,
she deployed to the Central African Republic as a UN
peacekeeper as part of Op prudence Minerca Upon
her return, Shelley returned to Cornwall and completed her training as an
IFR controller, becoming the first aerospace controller
AEC in the Caf to have been qualified to control in
any airspace in Canada. In June 2001,
Shelley was transferred to the Four Wing Cold Lake Combat Operations
Center, where she assumed duties as the officer in charge of the
center. On September 9, 2001, she
deployed with members of Four Wing Cold Lake to Innovic,
Yukon, where she was on duty during 911
operations. In 2014, due
to injuries sustained during military operations, shelley
released from the calf with almost 24 years total
served. Today we will be focusing on her experiences
on and following 911. So Shelley,
we always ask our guests, where did aviation begin for you?
The first memory that I have of being
really interested in anything, air Force.
I was about three years old,
living with my family along the
southern border of Manitoba and the United
States. One of my father's
friends had his own airplane and took me up
flying with my dad. I was sitting in my dad's
lap and
I had, uh, no fear.
I absolutely loved being up in the air
and flying. The next
experience that I had was during
the centennial
celebrations in
1967. There was
a search and rescue helicopter, uh, an old
Chinook. Well, they were new Chinooks then
that was on display. And I remember
being lifted by the loadmaster or the flight
engineer. I was all of four
years old at the time. And him reaching me just about by the
scruff of the neck and bringing
me up and into the cargo area.
And I thought it was absolutely amazing. But
from a military point of view, I
really didn't think about it until
I hit my glass
ceiling in my previous job
working in the Toronto Dominion Bank.
And so at the age of
26, I had topped out of my
career. I had a friend who was a weapons
controller, and I
considered what he was doing, and I thought,
he's no smarter than I am, I could do his
job. So
I was in Ottawa at the time, went down to the
recruiting center, and submitted
my name as an air weapons controller
candidate. It took about a year for
the whole process to be completed.
And in February of
1990, I received a phone call from the recruiting
center asking if I was still interested
in joining the Canadian forces
as an air weapons controller
recruit. Absolutely.
And a few months later, I
was off to chilliwack BC
and officer cadet training.
So it was, uh, as simple as that. You had a friend who was doing it and you
thought, hey, that sounds like fun. And you went.
For it.
Absolutely.
So we're going to chat now about 911 and your experiences that
day. How did that day start for you?
So we need to back it up
by a, uh, couple of weeks.
Traditionally, the Russian
air force will
deploy to their forward operating bases
in the spring and fall to
do daytime
training. The
members of the combat operations
center normally send up a small group, along
with a small group of
F supporting staff to act
as part of the NORAD
reaction to the Russians for
deployment. There's traditionally a
military air traffic controller that will
go up just to act as a liaison
for the civilian airport and the staff
that are there. And when the F
18s are airborne, the
air traffic controller liaison is always up
in the flight services tower that's
up there. I thought it would be a good opportunity
for me to go up and see
how the operation ran. It
wasn't until later, uh, in
the evening, once it got dark,
that my job kind of kicked
in. So I was up most of
the night on the
10 September while the
CF 18s were flying, monitoring the Russian
bears that were flying out of northern Russia.
I just got into sleep when
all of a sudden there was a lot of banging at my
door. I opened up the door
and there was this giant master corporal
standing at my door that said,
ma'am, you need to go into work.
A plane has just flown into one of the
towers of the World Trade Center.
Wow.
Yeah. Now,
knowing the various
different flight paths and restricted
airspace over New York City,
and how the weather was
pretty much all over North America that day,
there was no way that a
small aircraft would have been flying
in that area just because of the
updrafts. Ah, it's too hard in that part of
New York City to manage.
So it had to have been a fairly large
aircraft and a
fairly large aircraft flying into the
World Trade Centers. That's
something that's done on purpose.
Because as we saw several years
later with the miracle on the
Hudson, captain Sullivan did everything that he
could to avoid built up
areas. So my instinct was
that this was a purpose
driven event. And if my
instincts were right, we were going to need more than
just the one person from my staff
that would normally be on duty. We were going to need
more than one person.
So I m went
and banged on the door of the
master corporal that was on days
off. And when she
opened the door, I said, you need to come with me now, there's
an event going on. And she said, do
I have time to shower? And I said, no, just change
into your flight suit, we're going now. As a matter of fact,
you change. I'll meet you there.
And I started to head
out the personnel barracks
and that's when I saw the second
aircraft on the TV fly into the second
tower. So that's when I
had a good idea that
this was a day of
history. My section was a direct
connection to NORAD. So
that would be with North Bay,
with Winnipeg, and with Colorado
Springs. Up until that
day, NORAD and Air
Sovereignty missions had become kind of a joke
in the military flying community.
It wasn't cool. It wasn't seen as very
operational. Everybody wanted to
go fly air to air
combat. So all of a sudden,
NORAD and Air Sovereignty
Operations went to the
game in town. But
a lot of the corporate knowledge
had been lost because it had been seen as
unimportant. And all of a sudden, the
desk and the operations center that I was running
was the keeper of that corporate knowledge.
So I was spending an awful lot of time sitting
with the detachment commander
and the two I see the number two in
charge of the forward
operating location in Inuvic to get
them educated with the
defense conditions.
The defcons defcon or defense condition is the
US. Military's ranking system for defense readiness,
with five being the lowest perceived threat and one being
the highest.
And the potential
airspace changes that
might happen from a civilian point of
view. If we go to
Defcon Four, Defcon Three, what does
that entail for not just
military aircraft, but for civilian
aircraft as well? I got on my
cell phone and called
back to Edmonton Air
Traffic Center, which was
controlling the airspace for where we
were located. And I needed to know in
my head who I was going to be dealing
with if they shut down civilian airspace.
It just so happened that two days
before we had flown up
to Ennuvik four wing,
cold Lake air traffic controllers had
hosted a golf tournament and they
had invited up members of the
civilian team from Edmonton
Center. So I had been golfing
with the folks that I was now
going to be liaising with. So I
called and left a voicemail for one of the
supervisors, sue, that had been in My
forsome 72 hours earlier.
And I said, Hi, Sue. It's Captain
Coulter. I'm up in Anubic now
and when you get a chance, can you
give me a call? Just trying to get an idea of
what's going on. Then I went over
to Flight Services
and they were having a hard time
understanding that this wasn't an
exercise. They kept referring to it as an
exercise. And I said, no, we
are at, uh, war. For all
intents and purposes, we've been attacked.
We are behaving like we are at war right
now. And just as I'm saying
that, his teletype went off
and it provided an
update acknowledging that there
had been an event in New
York City evolving to
aircraft that had flown into the World
Trade Centers. They didn't have any information, but
they were still in the information gathering phase at that point in
time. I told them I'd be back and I would
keep them up to date anytime I had additional
information. My cell
phone rings and it was sue
from Edmonton Center. I answered it.
Captain Coulter. And she said, Hi, Captain
Coulter. It's sue from Edmonton Center.
I went, sue, it's Shelly. And she went,
Shelly? I said Shelly ATC Shelly cold
Lake. And she went, oh, my God. Am m
I ever glad it's you. So
right away there's that connection that was
needed and that became really
effective in getting information
passed. So she told me
at that point in time that the decision
hadn't become official but it was
very likely that we were going to
see the emergency
grounding of civilian
aircraft uh, before the end of the day.
You'll hear the acronyms Escat or
Skatana bounced around and
it's the emergency coordination of civilian air
traffic. So I go
back to the forward operating location
and pass that on to
the debt commander. So now
he wants to know what Escat and Sketana is.
So now I'm explaining to him, helping him
understand that when they're declared
and the levels that they're declared determine
how much civilian activity is
grounded and who
can fly. As I was there, we find
out that a, uh, third plane
crashes into the
Pentagon a fourth plane
crashes in Pennsylvania.
And
NORAD and
FAA and, uh, Canadian
equivalents all believe that they
are likely additional aircraft
that are out flying around
likely being hijacked.
Move a little bit forward. And
I'm standing in the operations center
and one of the
secure phones in my team's
section of the Op Center rings. So I pick
it up, and it's one of my colleagues in
North Bay who tells me that
we've gone to Defcon Three. I
remember thinking that. I never
thought I would
see that day happen where we had
moved out of Defcon Five into Defcon Three.
After we finished, uh, the authentication
process and I hung up on my
budy from North Bay, I pulled
the Deck Commander aside so nobody else could
overhear us, and I briefed him that
we'd gone to Defcon, uh, three.
And he
asked each of the heads of the different sections
to meet him in one corner of the
Op Center. He was, uh, a lieutenant
colonel and the rest were captains. And
he sat us down and told everybody
ladies and gentlemen, we've been moved to Defcon
Three. Make sure to check on your
folks and check on each other as well
because, uh, we're entering into a
historical point here and
we need to look after ourselves
and look after each other. So now I have to
take all this information and go over
to Flight Services.
I'm over at the FSS tower.
Go in. And I said to him,
we've gone to Defcon Three. I'm expecting us to go
to change the, um, airspace status
anytime now. And he
said, Well, I haven't heard anything and no
word of a lie. His teletype
goes off as we're standing there and it
says, NORAD has transitioned to
defcon three. So finally get back
to the op center and
we received the notification
that the civilian airspace was being
shut down. Planes were being diverted
into Gander and Goosebay.
Only flights that were for
medical emergencies or
for military purposes were to
be airborne, and everything else
was going to be challenged by
military aircraft. We
received notice
that a
Korean airliner was being
diverted from Alaskan
airspace into Canadian
airspace, and that, uh,
we're likely going to scramble the
CF eighteen s after it, which
we actually did. I remember
when the CF 18 pilots,
after they went airborne, you could hear
a pin drop in the op center.
What was pretty much going through everybody's mind
was that each of us
had a hand in
possibly being part of 200
civilians being shot down by
CF 18 aircraft.
Wow.
Yeah. A very sobering moment.
We had no idea who was
behind the attacks. We didn't know if it was the
Russians because of where we were
postured. That was what was
going through our head. Was wondering
if this was the first
step in a Russian attack on North America.
We got the notification that Escad and
Skatana had been implemented, so
there was nothing flying.
So when the, uh, fighter pilots got back and
did their intelligence debrief, the
first thing that I noted was that
one of the pilots didn't even take the time
to change into his flight suit.
He was wearing sweatpants and a
rugby shirt, his flying
boots, and he had his G suit on, but he didn't
even bother to take the time to, uh, change into his
flight suit. And they were scrambled to go after
the Korean airline that
had gone into
American airspace responding
improperly to transponder
codes. Those are the four digit codes
that most aircraft
that are flying on long routes
use to indicate where
they are and who they are. What
happened was
that because it was an
unusual day, the words that you
usually expect to hear out of a
pilot's mouth or an air traffic controller's
mouth weren't happening
m the way that they normally would.
So the Korean airliner, the air
crew, when they were told to
change their code going
from overseas into Alaskan
airspace, they
dialed in an incorrect code.
They were unaware of
anything else that was going on,
because for whatever reason, their company
operations center hadn't been able to
let them know that there was this
major air event that was happening
in North America. So out of an
abundance of caution, the
air traffic controllers
and, uh, the senior staff
responsible for Alaskan airspace
decided to
change the destination of that
aircraft from American airspace
to Yellowknife.
When the CF 18 pilots
at our location were doing their debrief,
one pilot, the number two, said
it was the eeriest
thing that he'd ever seen on his
radar. He said he
got three hits on his radar.
He'd never seen anything like it before
when he went airborne. The first hit on his
radar was his flight lead.
The second hit on his radar
was the tanker, and the
third hit on the radar
was the Korean
airliner. The sky was already empty by that
point in time. We had
received word that North
Bay and Colorado
Springs, uh, the mountain at Colorado Springs
had both buttoned up. They'd closed their blast
doors, something that has only
happened once before, and that was
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Again, Defcon three. The only time we'd gone to
it before was during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. So
that was September 11.
By the time September 12 came
and went, we
had received notification from the
Russians that not only were they standing down
their exercise, but they were going home. They
were deploying back to their main operating
bases as a way of
showing to us that they were not involved
in what was happening, and
also, as almost, uh, a
gentleman's agreement to allow the
teams that were needed elsewhere
to go look after what was going
on at home.
We started to
pack up everything and return back to Cold
Lake on, um, the
13 September.
When we got back,
we were given a couple days just to
unpack and get a couple
days rest, and then we're back
into work working
an increased ops. Temple until
we were able, we NORAD
Canada and the United States and
the rest of the world were able to identify that
this was a threat that we hadn't expected
before. Ironically,
NORAD Ah was in the middle of an
exercise on September
11, so they were already
in an exercise mode and in an
exercise beat with their staff.
There was an Airborne Warning
and Control Systems aircraft
that was off the East
Coast, but it
was a training mission, so it was all trainees on
board with instructors sitting
behind them. And so
when the two aircraft,
uh, four aircraft crashed,
we already had an awax up in the
air that could help finding the
additional aircraft if there had been
any. But as we know now, there
weren't any additional aircraft at that time.
That was my experience from the 9
September 2001 until
September the 13th.
How did that impact you in the short term and for the
rest of.
Your career in the short
term? I was angry.
I was angry that these
guys felt that this
was something that they could do
and get away with.
Attacking my neighborhood,
attacking my friends. I had friends
that grew up in New York, friends that were in the
Pentagon that day. I had friends in
Colorado Springs, in the mountain complex and in North
Bay. I felt like it was a personal attack.
I remember being
angry, um, when
we didn't attack back right away,
which is the lower ranks.
Reaction is like, we got to go now. Got to strike
while the iron is hot. And thank goodness
that the older gray hair
does the sober second look and saying, okay, no,
we need to take a moment here to
gather information and assess what's going
on. Now, looking
back with 22
years hindsight
and time in
the sober second look seat,
I understand a lot more
why some of the decisions were made,
why some of the time was
taken. There are other decisions that
I look at and I still question to this day,
why did it take so long? And,
um, there's the cognitive part of me that
goes, the reason that it took so long is
because we hadn't experienced anything like this
before. So there
was, I believe, an awful lot of,
wait, what? Are you sure?
Okay, I need to get this from a second source.
Whereas now
we would be a lot quicker to respond.
But like everything else, I'm sure
that memories
will fade and,
uh, information will go into the history books.
I hope that I'm not right, but
unless we learn the lesson, we'll be doomed to repeat it
again.
Let's hope not. Let's hope we've learned those lessons and learned them
well.
Yeah, I hope so.
As horrible as that day
was for me, for
us, for the world, it was
incredible to be involved in
it. I had an incredible career.
Uh, I loved every bit of it, even
the really crappy stuff.
It has given me a
unique perspective,
and I look forward to in my
old age, being able to talk
to some of the junior members of the
flying community and pass on some of
my experience.
Yeah, well, even today you're doing that. This will
reach a lot of people, and they'll learn from that. And
I just wanted to thank you so much for
taking the time to be on the show and to share.
Your story with us.
Thank you very much for inviting me
and for listening
to my little bit of,
uh, history. I appreciate it.
Our final guest today on the Pilot Project podcast is retired
air traffic controller Bert Petal out of Gander, Newfoundland.
Welcome to the show, Bert. Thanks for having me.
I hope you're all having, uh, a great afternoon.
Yeah, absolutely. Before we get started, we'll go through
Bert's biography. Albert Burt Petal of
Gander, Newfoundland, began training as an air traffic controller on
January 12, 1982. He spent time in
Moncton learning the basics of ATC before going to
Gander Tower, where he spent two months learning the visual flight
rules procedures of ATC. From there, he attended the
Transport Canada Training Institute in Cornwall, Ontario, for
an intense course in instrument rules flight procedures. He
returned to Gander Area Control Center, or ACC,
for an even more intense round of training. Bert
earned his instructor rating and helped teach six Japanese
controllers who were developing procedures for oceanic control between
Asia and North America. He helped develop the Canadian
automated air traffic system Cats, which
became the national operating system for air traffic control in
Canada. He retired in 2019 as a
supervisor for low domestic and Gander ACC.
Burt has seen many things in his career.
1985 was a bad year with the Air Indian One Eight Two
bombing, and then the Aero air crash on December twelveTH,
which was the biggest air disaster to happen on Canadian soil.
But the one the world would remember most is September 11,
2001. Bert was the approach controller for Gander
terminal that morning. So, Bert, where did
aviation begin for you?
Well, for me, I, um, was born the
day after the Queen opened the new, uh, airport
in Gander. So the new international airport was open the day before
I was born. So I probably heard
airplanes as my first things I ever heard in
life. Gander, of course, was a big
airport town, and we saw all
kinds of airplanes from DC Three,
S 747. I, uh, was actually
at the airport when the Concord first touched
down in North America and watched him arrive in
Gander.
Oh, wow.
Growing up in Gander, the airport was a big thing. My dad was
a meteorologist at the airport. He worked there for 38
years. And we ride our bike and go up and just go in the office
and, um, visit them. And you go to the
international terminal, you didn't know who you'd run into. It could be Frank
Sinatra or Mohammed Ali or Peter
Castro. It's a great experience growing
up.
That's really cool. So it's really in your blood.
Yeah.
My brother is an aircraft maintenance engineer. He was in the
military, worked in Cold Lake, and, uh, with 510
Squadron in Winnipeg for 22 years.
Okay, he's back here now. He still does, uh, maintenance, um, on
the Cormrand aircraft or, uh, 103 Search and Rescue here
in Gander.
Oh, awesome.
Where were you when you found out that a plane had hit the North Tower of
the World Trade Center?
I was actually at home in bed. My wife worked at
CFB Gander, and we had only arrived home the
night before. There was 24 of us were on a golf trip to Prince
Edward Island for five days. So I was home, I
was in bed, my wife was gone to work, and the phone rang
and I answered. She said, once, um, you get up and check
the TV, there appears to be, uh, an airplane has
hit the North Tower in, uh, New York City and the
base is going on lockdown. So
I hung up the phone and turned on the TV. And
within another five or ten minutes, uh, the shift manager from work
called and asked me to come in right away, that there was an emergency
situation. They needed some extra people.
Wow.
So your shift manager called and asked you to come
in. And then can you tell us about how the rest of that day
went.
It's a small town. It takes me probably five
minutes, ten minutes to get to work. So I left and got
into work. And as I was getting there, they were just
closing down the US. Airspace. So everything was
starting to get a little crazy. Everyone was being told
that they had to land at the nearest available airport.
On, uh, low domestic, we typically have maybe one or two
sectors open because we control all of Newfoundland, Labrador
and all those airports within it. So low domestic is
28,000ft and below high en
route. They control 29,000 and
above and 95 to
90. Uh, 8% of the airplanes that are coming westbound off the
ocean. Those days are overflying. They never, ever
enter low level airspace. But on that
particular day, of course, they all had to enter
aerospace. Just wasn't time
to, um, get strips to the
low level controllers in the format that we're used to.
Um, no passing investments to the towers.
It was, uh, sort of chaotic, uh, starting
out. So the high level controllers, we
would coordinate back and forth which,
uh, airplanes were going to what airport. We basically were working
with the towers and the airports, asking
the supervisor would ask how many airplanes they could
take. And we, as controllers, would send them to the airports that they,
uh, wanted us to send them to. Majority of the
airplanes all wanted to come to Gander because Gander was,
uh, a big international airport, and a lot of those
pilots are very familiar with Gander.
Gander was actually backup landing
spot for the, uh, space shuttle. If they had
to abort, Gander was an alternate location
for them to land. So people are very familiar with
Gander.
So was it difficult? Did you guys have to take into
consideration, for example, how much fuel an aircraft had on board
and where they could get to? Or were there many people who were
short on fuel? Or was it more a case of people with extra
fuel and needing to dump?
No, it was the other way around. Most everyone had
plenty of fuel. And in actual fact, we,
uh, opened up, uh, arrival sector for St.
John's Gander arrival. There was a
western arrival sector for Steve Millen,
deer Lake. As well as the low level en route
sectors, we also opened up a fuel
dumping sector. So it was one guy that was just directing
fuel dumps for all the airplanes that had to dump fuel before they could go
land at an airport.
And would you guys normally have an area that
was put aside for fuel dumping? Like, for example, when we're
in Greenwood, there's an area for fuel dumping, for emergencies. Did you
have one that was normally set aside, or was this no, not at
all.
It's one we did ad hoc. As the airplanes advised us
that they needed to dump fuel, we'd clear them to a, uh,
sterilized altitude that they could begin, and I'd just hand them off
to the guy that was controlling all the fuel dumps. Of course,
you've got to be 15 miles either side of track, ten minutes
in trail to dump fuel. So there was a line of airplanes dumping
fuel north and southbound, staying away
from all the airports. They're basically out over oceanic
airspace inside our domestic area, but
out over, uh, water more than anything else.
You mentioned strips earlier. Can you explain what a
strip is?
Flight, uh, information strip had all the details of the
airplanes on, uh, low domestic. For a
westbound strip, the Ident aircraft type,
its speed would be on the left hand side of the
strip and a fixed posting. So if you had three or
four fixed postings going through your airspace, there'd be,
say, an eastern point, a midpoint across the
airspace, and, uh, an exit point on the west side. So
you'd probably have three strips on the board for each individual
airplane. Eastbound airplanes, of course, were just the opposite.
They had the, uh, Ident, the aircraft type, the speed
squat code would be on, uh, the right hand side of the strip.
Fixed posting would be on the, uh, left on
high level. The Ident was all in the
same format, would all be on the left side of the strip,
but they'd be printed in black for eastbound and
red for, uh, westbound. So
there was a big difference in the strip formats between
low domestic and arrival, as there was for
high level. But it was, uh,
such a big rush to get those airplanes on the ground, no one
expected them to be coming into low level airspace. Towers weren't
expecting them. So what ended up happening was when
the high level controller cleared the flight down to
29,000, they'd come over and give the guy, uh, who was
going to get the airplane, depending what airport they're going to, we
would use the high level strip and
basically passing estimates to the tower net was
out the window. There's no time to start
phoning and passing all these estimates. We just do it verbally over
a hot ride and let them know what the next five or ten
airplanes would be coming to their airport.
Wow.
So you guys were just operating outside of any of your
standard operating procedures?
Uh, absolutely, yeah. But it got to
calm down within the first half hour or so. It was pretty smooth
operation. We had a bunch of extra people called in.
So all the high level controllers that were controlling radar had a
data man, and it would be the data man that would run back and forth
with the strips. So there was always someone
watching the airplanes and talking to the airplanes, while there was
other extra controllers running around doing the grunt work, running
back for class and off strips and things like that, that we
needed.
Did you witness anything that was especially
significant or dramatic on that
day.
Just, uh, when I got there, they were splitting open
sectors. They were opening a Gander arrival sector, and one of the
supervisors was initially sitting in so we could get
the airspace set up and get your radar screen and everything set
up. I guess he was in a rush to get the first few
airplanes on the ground. It was a bit of a panic when we first started
out. We didn't know what we were getting into, so he was
trying to get them on the ground as fast as he could. And two heavy
aircraft lined up on final on Gander. The first
one rolled out long because none of these guys were
familiar with Gander Airport or we don't have parallel
runways or high speed taxiways. So the first
arrival actually was, uh, still on the runway
when the second guy was close final. So they had to
pull him up and go around. So that was
the only close thing that I saw that
day. I relieved the supervisor at that
point in time, and I probably had eight or ten airplanes
on my frequency. I said, Guys, uh, as long as everyone
has got lots of fuel, you don't have any emergencies, you don't have
any issues, I'm just going to space you all out 10 miles
on final. And everyone that was on
the frequency agreed with that. Just said, yeah, that's a great idea. We
got lots of room. It was a beautiful VFR day. There was no, uh,
issues with instrument approaches at all. So
we're just basically boxing people
on east and west of the airport. And I was
just trying to aim them for a ten mile final and
let one guy go downwind and turn them base leg behind the next
one and line them all up with 10 miles between them. So they had
a nice, stable, long final approach.
And so that all worked out pretty smooth. Yeah, it did.
Yeah, we had lots of time. There was no panic that
way. Uh, there was no rush for anyone to get on the ground.
Once everyone realized they had the land, uh,
everyone's pretty cooperative, they realized what kind of a
situation we were in.
Well, I was going to say it's funny, I think we think of that
day as a pretty frantic day for air traffic controllers.
But it sounds like where you guys were working,
you were able to keep calm and
just make it happen.
Yeah.
Very proud of the team we had here and the controllers we
had. There was no panic
initially it was a shock and just trying to get things
straightened out and how it was going to roll out.
But once we got into it and, uh, setting
people up, knew what airports they were going to, it rolled
out pretty smoothly. We did have some airplanes that
wanted to go on Toronto or wanted to go to. Different
destinations, but we were told to have everyone
on the ground as soon as we can. So it was
very short discussions with people who wanted to go other words, other
ways. Uh, I had one near India, wanted to know if he
could go on to Toronto. I said, Negative, you must now land
Gander. And nothing else after
that. He just said, Roger, and
just end 6000ft fly heading three 10.
And that was it. I get them lined up for the runway.
Well, that's what it's like when air traffic control tells you what to
do. You're going to do it.
Yeah. It's not ATC suggests,
it's ATC clears. Uh, that's
right.
Now, another really interesting perspective I wanted to
get from you was the perspective on the ground in Gander.
Most Canadians, I think, are aware, or at least certainly we
were back then, that Gander took on an immense amount
of people who know you just mentioned that Air
India flight, so they were expecting to go to Toronto. Now they're in
Gander. So how many people ended up stuck in Gander?
Temporarily
6800. Uh, at that time we
had a population of about 9000, so it was pretty close to
doubling the size of the town.
Wow. So where did everybody stay?
Just, uh, about everywhere uh, you could think of. It
wasn't just Gander. It was all the communities
surrounding here. It was Lewisport and Glenwood and
Appleton and Gambo and Dover.
A, uh, whole bunch of communities ended up taking for
all these service groups. Legions
and Lions Clubs and, uh, all the
schools. That was one of the first things
when I, uh, finally got relieved and
came home. The call went out for
sleeping bags and air mattresses and things like that.
So I actually lost three sleeping bags.
Once everyone was gone, you didn't get anything back?
Yeah. And how
was that on the community? Was it tough or did everyone just come
together?
Well, as I say, Ganner being
an airport town, it has an emergency
plan in preparation for things like this.
And, uh, things went quite smoothly. The calls just went
out from, uh, like a local TV station. We had a
local Rogers cable, a local
production, and they just got on air. And you turn on
cable nine and they were just saying, okay, we
need sleeping bags at Gander
Academy or we need toilet paper at Gander
Collegiate. In two or 3 hours you would hear
the guy on the cable say, okay, stop bringing toilet paper
to Gander Collegiate. They've got enough.
So it was amazing for the community to pull together way we did.
But for the air traffic control part of it, we had
a busy three or 4 hours. And then we had five
days doing nothing. We actually turned our cafeteria
into, uh, takeout space. We cooked meals
for five days and delivered them to all the schools or all the service
buildings where people were being stayed.
Well, I suppose there was nothing going on. There was no one
flying.
It was crazy. The first and only time
in my 36 and a half years that there was not
a radar target in the sky.
That must have been kind of eerie.
Yeah, well, when you look at it, um, as I
finished up, we were looking probably 16
to 1800 flights a day going back and forth
across the ocean. So typically you have an
eastbound flow that airplanes, uh, start
heading overseas just around supper time, Newfoundland time,
and fly until around three or 04:00 in the morning. And
then eight to 09:00 in the morning, they're turnaround coming back
westbound and going to North America. So you're
getting m eight to 900 flights in each
flow.
That's wild. Yeah.
People don't realize how busy it is, but you get a
clear night here on the west coast of Newfoundland. Look up and all you can
see is ID, uh, lights.
Well, that's pretty much where all of the whether they're heading
to Gander or somewhere beyond. That's where
most of the tracks across the Atlantic, uh, cross.
The North Atlantic Track system is developed by the
Gander planners. So that's part of, uh,
a function of the oceanic control, uh, sector. So we're
actually two different area control centers. There's
Gander, uh, and there's, uh, Domestic and
oceanic, all in one building. We all work hand in hand
with each other, but it's considered two pieces of
airspace.
Uh, the last thing I wanted to ask you is what
changes did you see happen in the world of ATC after
911 specifically related to
procedures or security?
Uh, not a lot on our side of it. It's more
on the airport side through security. Our FAM
flight program got, uh, canceled every two years.
We used to be able to take a trip. We'd ride in the cockpit
and, uh, get familiar with pilot
procedures just for our own, uh, so we
knew on the ground what they were doing in the cockpit.
I've gone to Scotland and went to visit
Heathrow, flew across in their Canada
crew, watched the arrival in Heathrow,
watch all those airplanes around everywhere.
That's awesome. That's too bad that that ended up canceled.
Yeah, so that was one of the things that you weren't allowed in the
cockpit anymore. So the Fan flight program was basically put
on hold for that period.
So you didn't see any new emergency plans or
procedures that came into place?
Not really, because basically what we had worked so well,
I don't think it needed to be updated very much.
That's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's pretty
amazing that all of the emergency procedures set
up in Gander worked perfectly.
As perfectly as we, uh, would have expected them.
Under those circumstances. You didn't expect
6700 people to arrive in your town one
afternoon.
That's right.
And right now, the Broadway play
or the play Come From Away has
been playing here in Gander all, uh, summer.
It finishes up next week and there's been people
here from everywhere, all over the world.
Asia, Australia. It's crazy.
So the town has been full of, uh, strangers all
summer long as well. It's about what happened
here on 911.
It's a musical.
It's crazy. Who would ever thought that you could make a musical
about a disaster like that? But it
was based on the stories that this couple came,
uh, they came here on the 10th anniversary of
911 and interviewed, uh, as many people
as they could and they ended up
writing a musical about it. And it was on Broadway for
almost four years.
I think that's amazing.
It's pretty emotional when you go see it,
the way you see other people look at it.
I, uh, golf a lot, and I'm on the executive of the golf
course here. I was just out doing some
work one afternoon, I came up on beside number
14 green. There was a couple there and I hadn't seen them before, and I just
stopped and spoke to them. I said, how are you enjoying your allen? And
they said, it was great. I said, it's your first time here? Yeah. We come from North
Carolina. I said, oh, you must have come to see the play. He said,
yeah, we did. I said, well,
I was the approach controller Gadner on
911, and it was amazing. They just
came over and wanted to hug me and thank
us for everything we did. To us, it was much,
ah, ado about nothing because it's something.
Ah, we just took on that task and didn't give
it a second thought, but it seems people really
appreciated it.
Oh, yeah. I mean, think about the number
of aircraft that you safely
coordinated and got on the ground under
very extraordinary circumstances. And then when that
was done, the taking in of so many
strangers and treating them like family. It's very
east coast hospitality type of story, for
sure.
It worked like a charm.
Well, Bert, is there anything else you think I should ask you about?
You're obviously deal, uh, with military, uh,
aircraft, and we do here a
lot. We have a lot of, uh, aerospace reservations come through
here. We have a search and rescue squadron
here. There used to be a, uh, squadron in, uh,
Goosebe. I had some funny stories over the years.
There used to be a lot of German fighter pilots up there training
and from different countries. And I remember, uh,
I think it was a tornado. Declared emergency,
needed to get back to Goose Bay. Roger, us the nature
of your emergency. Had a bird strike, so
I got him cleared down to 7000ft, sent him over to Goose
Ratcon. After he had landed, the tower call me. He said,
what did that guy say was wrong? I said, he had a bird
strike. And the guy in the tower said, well, the bird must have been
sitting in a tree because he's got a piece of a spruce tree sticking
at the leading edge of his wing.
Oh, my gosh.
So there's just been some great experiences over the
year.
Okay, well, I think that wraps it up. I just want
to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to share
your experiences with us. And I want to thank you for the work you did that
day.
Oh, no problem.
My pleasure.
All right, that's going to wrap up our episode. Looking back and
remembering 911 from a Canadian perspective.
Did you know that the third Friday of every September is
Military Family Appreciation Day? There's no way we could
do this job without them. So for our next episode, we'll be sitting
down with a few of the spouses of pilots to gain their
perspective on what it's like to marry into the RCAF. Uh,
do you have any questions about anything you've heard in this episode or would
you or someone you know make a great guest on the show? You can reach out
to us at thepilotprojectpodcast at, uh@gmail.com,
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Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See
you. Engineer
shut down all four shutting down all four engines.