25 years after 9/11: Canadian travel advisors remember the day that changed travel forever

Twenty-five years later, Alexis Parks still remembers the profound sense of worry, disbelief and sadness that filled her Vancouver office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Parks, now head supervisor at Travel Best Bets’ Langley, B.C. office and groups manager, had started that Tuesday like any other: waking up, turning on the television and watching the news before work.

But that morning, the images appearing on screen were almost impossible to comprehend.

“I woke up that morning and followed the same routine I still have today: turn on the TV and watch the news,” Parks told PAX. “Living in B.C., we were just waking up to what was happening.”

At the time, Parks worked in the Groups Department at Canada 3000 Holidays in Vancouver. She arrived at work as the scale of the terrorist attacks in the United States – and their implications for the travel industry – were beginning to emerge.

Flights were grounded. Travellers were stranded. Travel advisors and suppliers scrambled for information at a time when the term “social media” had yet to enter the lexicon.

Parks had a group scheduled to travel to Las Vegas on Sept. 13.

“We all had to navigate the uncertainty and communicate with out agents what was happening,” she recalled. “What was most important was being able to provide options quickly, wherever we could.”

A world changing in real time

It was the beginning of a crisis that would transform aviation, alter the trajectory of Canadian airlines and fundamentally change the way people travel.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, along with the crash of a fourth hijacked aircraft, killed thousands and triggered an international security response whose effects continue to shape travel 25 years later.

In Canada, some of the most consequential decisions in the history of the country’s aviation system were made within minutes.

As The Canadian Press recently recounted in a special airline-focused feature marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Marie-Hélène Lévesque, then-special assistant to transport minister David Collenette, was travelling with the minister from Montreal to Ottawa when news of the attacks began to unfold.

“In that minivan, all the major decisions were taken,” Lévesque, now director general of the Public Health Agency of Canada, told CP.

Following the lead of U.S. authorities, Collenette authorized the closure of Canadian airspace shortly after a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. – the first time either Canada or the U.S. had taken such an extraordinary step.

Before his cellphone battery died, Collenette instructed Nav Canada to order 270 aircraft over the Atlantic to return to Europe.

Another 224 diverted flights carrying 33,000 passengers landed at 17 Canadian airports within hours, marking the most extensive aircraft grounding in Canadian history.

Gander, N.L., famously welcomed 38 planes and roughly 6,500 passengers. The generosity shown by the community’s residents to thousands of stranded strangers would later inspire the hit musical Come From Away.

For travel advisors, however, the unprecedented shutdown created a more immediate challenge: finding answers for frightened clients when answers were scarce.

“Our phones never stopped ringing”

Ontario-based travel advisor Carolyn Kremer, today a senior leisure consultant and destination specialist at Direct Travel, was in her office when she heard on the radio that the first tower had been struck.

“I remember thinking it was a terrible accident,” Kremer told PAX. “When news came of the second plane, it became very clear that this was no accident, but rather intentional and I was shocked and confused as to why someone would do something like this.”

Her agency quickly shifted into crisis mode.

“We immediately had a meeting about our next course of action, reached out to all clients that had imminent travel plans and just got busy trying to work out the best resolution for each and every client,” she said.

As aircraft remained grounded and the travelling public searched for information, advisors became a lifeline for people caught away from home.

“Our phones never stopped ringing that day and for many days after,” she said. “The most difficult were calls from clients in destination, desperate to get home to their families. It’s certainly a day I will never forget, and a day that always reminds me to be grateful for what I have.”

Louie Di Tacchio, owner of Progress Travel, also based in Ontario, remembers the same relentless uncertainty.

“The impact on travel was immediate,” Di Tacchio told PAX. “The phones at the agency were ringing constantly, with clients calling about flights, upcoming trips and loved ones who were travelling.”

Advisors were processing the horror unfolding on television while simultaneously trying to guide clients through a situation the industry had never encountered.

“With flights grounded and so much uncertainty, there were very few answers we could give beyond reassuring clients that we would do everything we could to help,” Di Tacchio said.

The nature of the work changed almost instantly.

“We went from arranging vacations and business trips to helping people get home safely and dealing with an extraordinary situation none of us had ever experienced before,” he said.

Canadian aviation takes a hit

Inside Air Canada, executives were confronting a crisis that would have repercussions for years.

Calin Rovinescu, then an executive vice-president at Air Canada and later its CEO, was visiting an art museum in Barcelona during a wedding anniversary getaway when calls from his assistant alerted him to what was happening in New York.

As recounted in the Canadian Press, he scrambled to join an emergency meeting with Air Canada executives from a café.

“The world was changing before my eyes, and the people around me had no clue what was about to happen,” Rovinescu told the news outlet.

The collapse in air travel that followed dealt a severe financial blow to airlines.

Air Canada, heavily reliant on traffic to and from the United States, cut 6,600 jobs and posted a $1.25-billion loss in 2001. Canada 3000, then the country’s second-largest airline, was bankrupt by November.

Air Canada would enter bankruptcy protection in 2003, with the decline in travel following 9/11 compounded by the SARS epidemic.

Its 18-month restructuring eliminated $13 billion in debt, brought significant cost-cutting and helped push the airline toward higher-margin international flying.

The disappearance of Canada 3000 and Canadian Airlines, coupled with Air Canada’s restructuring, also created room for WestJet to expand.

“It allowed WestJet to flourish...without having to worry about a lot of competition pushing them around,” John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, told CP. “And 9/11 put carriers that were on the on the edge of financial performance out of business.”

Security becomes part of the journey

For travellers, one of the most visible legacies of 9/11 emerged at the airport.

Canada invested billions in new aviation security measures and created the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, transferring responsibility for passenger screening from individual airlines.

(Before 9/11, airport security screening in Canada was the responsibility of individual commercial airlines, operating under standards established by Transport Canada).

Over time, enhanced checkpoints and new procedures became fixtures of flying: removing shoes, taking laptops out of bags and limiting liquids to containers of 100 millilitres.

“The most challenging times to manage”

Processes that are routine for travellers today are rooted in the security transformation that followed Sept. 11.

But for advisors who worked through those first chaotic days, the anniversary is also personal.

“The weeks that followed brought many questions. They were some of the most challenging times to manage and it forever changed the travel industry,” said Parks.

In 2018, Parks visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.

“It truly took my breath away,” she said. “The thought and care behind every part of the memorial, from the pools and trees to the Survivor Tree, was incredibly moving,” she said.

For an industry that has since weathered SARS, economic shocks and a global pandemic, the events of 9/11 also demonstrated just how dramatically travel can change – and how it can endure.

Rovinescu sees a parallel with COVID-19, despite the pandemic’s much longer disruption. “…the takeaway was, this is a resilient industry,” he told CP.

That resilience remains part of 9/11’s legacy among travel industry professionals. 

For Di Tacchio, it was a defining moment. 

“It’s hard to believe that 25 years have passed,” Di Tacchio said. “That day remains one of those moments in my career, and in my life, that I will never forget.”

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