Newfoundlanders, provided they kiss a fresh cod fish.
But Bass only learnt about all those events years later. It’s a strange quirk of history that those most
centrally placed in the action are often the most blind to it. “It took me months and months before I could
even figure out which airplane hit which tower first,” she explains,” because everything that we were seeing
on TV was the re-runs, and I was so confused about it, was it American or United, who hit the north, who
hit the south? It took me a very long time to even process the order in which everything happened.”
Bass and her crew had to stay sequestered at the Comfort Inn in Gander, waiting for the call from American
to go to the airport. She ate every meal at the attached restaurant, so she would only learn later that the
Ganderites served 285,000 meals during their five days.
The only local she mingled with was Pat Woodford, an air traffic controller who acted as a liaison between
the plane crew and the passengers. Woodford gave her the keys to his brand new pick-up truck. “I said, you
can’t give me the keys to your truck, you don’t even know me. And he said, that doesn’t matter. I thought it
was weird. But that made me realise, especially after seeing the show, that that’s just how those people are.”
The plaque Bass gave to thank the Comfort Inn
on behalf of her crew (Beverley Bass/American
Airlines)The passengers were sad to leave Gander, Bass said, because they had lived “such a beautiful life. But there
was almost a guilt complex, a survivors’ guilt feeling that we were treated so beautifully while our country
was suffering through the worst tragedy in American history.”
Not everyone was treated so beautifully. When they had finally got the aircraft through security as the sun
rose on 15 September, a flight attendant approached Bass about two passengers of Middle Eastern
appearance (in the show, it’s just one). Bass wasn’t to know this, but the men – Egyptians, as it turned out
- had been a concern for some passengers the whole time in Gander: they had been off alone, on their
mobiles, making people wary.
She told Bass she did not want to let them back on the plane, so Bass fetched the head of security. The two
passengers were plucked out of the waiting area and made to submit to a strip search in their underwear.
Bass insisted on remaining in the room. “In order for me to go back to my flight attendants and tell them
everything was OK, it was imperative that I be there. I didn’t want somebody to just tell me that. I wanted
to know firsthand.”
After the plane landed back in Dallas, Bass ran up to the two passengers waiting on the curb for a ride. She
apologised profusely for what had happened. “And they both looked at me and said, don’t you worry about a
thing. Under the circumstances, we totally understand.”
Bass says that day, she had two things on her mind: “I wanted to tell the world about Gander, and I wanted