Gander residents drop everything to drive stranded air passengers to hotels

Residents of Gander, N.L. formed an impromptu volunteer shuttle service for about 200 passengers aboard two planes forced to land unexpectedly at the town's airport on Wednesday night.

Jackie Freake, assistant manager at Quality Hotel, said she got a call that evening saying the planes had been diverted to the Gander International Airport and the people on board needed hotel rooms.

The aircraft had taken off from Toronto and Montreal, and she said they were unable to land as scheduled in St. John's because of the weather.

The passengers were assigned rooms at four hotels in town, but there were only a few cabs on the road to transport them, Freake said. She posted in a local Facebook group, saying there were more than 100 people at the airport needing rides to their accommodations.

It was 10:03 p.m. local time.

"I didn't ask anybody to help or anything like that and boom, my phone lit up!" Freake said Thursday. "It was just, 'Can we go get them, can we go get them?"'

All the stranded passengers were snug in their hotel rooms within an hour of her post, she said.

The people of Gander made international news when they sheltered and fed thousands of airline passengers stranded in the town for days after the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The central Newfoundland town's generosity during that time is chronicled in the hit Broadway musical "Come From Away."

Colleen Edwards had an infant when the planes arrived at the Gander airport in 2001. She was part of a group of parents that donated baby supplies to passengers who needed them, she said in an interview.

It was only natural for her to help people on Wednesday night's planes, Edwards said. She didn't see Freake's Facebook message in time to offer shuttles that evening, but she was among the many cars lined up at Sinbad's Hotel and Suites to transport people from their hotels back to the airport on Thursday morning.

Edwards drove a couple from Ontario in one trip, and a woman and a man from St. John's in another.

It was no big deal, she said, adding that she didn't have to work until Thursday afternoon, so she had the time.

"I'm glad I did it," she said in an interview. "I love chatting. I love saying, like, 'Where are you from, and how do you feel about being stranded?' The woman asked if she could stop at the store to get a drink. I said, absolutely."