Twenty-five years ago, the skies went silent – and for travel advisors, an industry built on getting people where they needed to go suddenly became all about getting them home.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania brought commercial aviation across North America to an unprecedented halt. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the first nationwide ground stop in its history and by 9:45 a.m. ordered all aircraft in U.S. airspace to land at the nearest airport. More than 4,500 aircraft were in the air at the time. 

Canada became an integral part of the emergency response. Under Operation Yellow Ribbon, 224 flights carrying more than 33,000 passengers were redirected to airports across the country after U.S. airspace closed. Gander, N.L. alone received 38 international flights and more than 6,500 stranded passengers. 

The disruption did not end when airplanes began flying again. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global passenger traffic declined 2.9% in 2001 and airlines worldwide lost US$13 billion after posting a US$3.7 billion profit the previous year. In the U.S., passenger traffic would not surpass 2000 levels until 2004. 

For travel advisors working through it all, however, the statistics tell only part of the story. Sept. 11 meant stranded clients, ringing phones, cancelled vacations, lost revenue and frightened travellers – all unfolding in real time with far fewer communication tools than advisors have today.

And 25 years later, those who lived through it still remember exactly where they were.

‘Everything Just Stopped’

Tony Santelli of Voyages Funrex Alcyon in Laval, Que. was hosting an Air Canada Vacations breakfast presentation when his wife called to tell him that an aircraft had struck the World Trade Center.

Initially, reports suggested a small private aircraft had crashed into the building. Within minutes, Santelli and his colleagues understood the scale of what was happening.

“Every eye was glued to monitors and televisions, every ear tuned to radios,” he recalled. “The entire industry froze.”

Gary Rams of Crowfoot Travel in Calgary, who specializes in soft adventure and cultural experiences, remembers much the same feeling.

“I remember it like it was yesterday. I was working in a brick-and-mortar travel agency, and everything just stopped,” he said.

For Marianne Vogel, CTC, of Just for You Travel & Consulting in Dundas, Ont., the events were especially personal. She was escorting a church group on a local orchard tour in Ontario when her office contacted her to say her husband was trying to reach her.

The reason for his concern was chilling: Vogel had been at the Twin Towers just one day earlier while travelling with a Dutch Canadian Legion group.

Her cell phone was not working, forcing her to use the orchard’s landline to reassure her husband that she was safely back in Ontario. Having travelled to New York seven times in the preceding months, Vogel had also made friends in the city as well as contacts at the Pentagon.

For Valerie Murphy of Direct Travel Waterloo, then working at Cambridge Travel American Express, the crisis immediately became about clients who were supposed to be travelling that very day.

She had passengers booked to fly to London that evening ahead of a Globus tour departing Sept. 12. After the second aircraft hit the World Trade Center, she contacted Globus, but at that point no one knew what would happen next.

Eventually, airports closed and the trip was cancelled.

“I had people stranded all over the world,” Murphy recalled. “One client was in the U.S. and ended up renting a car and driving home. It was absolute chaos that whole week, just being there for our clients.”

‘No Sales – Only Refunds’

As the immediate emergency gave way to days of uncertainty, travel advisors became de facto crisis managers.

Murphy remembers phones “ringing off the hook” as advisors tried to find solutions without knowing when aircraft would be allowed back into the sky.

“We would re-protect clients on future flights, just hoping the airports would be open again,” she said. “It was a guessing game for several days.”

Santelli remembers an equally abrupt reversal in the normal rhythm of the business.

“For the next two weeks, there were no sales – only refunds,” he said. “In more than 50 years in the travel business, those were the toughest days I can remember.”

The shock extended beyond air travel. Vogel’s business at the time was heavily focused on motorcoach groups, many of which did not involve flying. Even so, New York-bound trips were quickly cancelled and itineraries had to be redirected.

“Many cancelled their bus tours, naturally, if they had anything to do with New York,” she said. “We had to change destinations for many of my tours and lost many as well, which translated into a lot of lost revenue.”

For Rams, one of the defining differences between 2001 and more recent crises like the COVID pandemic was just how isolated travel professionals could feel.

“We didn’t have social media or instant communication with our support community. You really felt alone,” he said.

Clients were receiving a continuous stream of television news while advisors simultaneously dealt with cancellations and tried to restore some sense of confidence.

“Clients were getting their news from CNN and other television networks, and the fear was constant – 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Rams said. “We were trying to help our clients make decisions and feel comfortable travelling again while also dealing with all the cancellations, changes and uncertainty.”

Fear Outlasted The Ground Stop

Flights gradually returned to the skies, but travellers did not necessarily return with them.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows just how dramatic the immediate decline was. International passenger boardings on U.S. carriers were down 27.1% year over year in September 2001, while domestic boardings fell 34.4%. 

The impact lasted well beyond that first month. Research subsequently cited by IATA estimated that travel demand dropped more than 31% during the four to five months immediately following the attacks. 

Advisors saw that fear firsthand.

“We were so quiet that fall. It seemed everyone was afraid to travel,” Murphy said.

One couple she had booked on an annual cruise was so shaken that they did not fly again until 2016.

Canadian winter, she jokes, eventually helped persuade some travellers to reconsider.

“Once the snow came, a lot of people forgot their fears and got back in the air,” she said. “I don’t think we returned fully to normal for over a year. It was a very scary time in the industry, but just another storm we have survived.”

Santelli similarly estimates that it took about a year for his sales to begin resembling their pre-9/11 levels.

“The airport, once part of the excitement of travel, became a place of tension,” he said.

Travel Security Changed Forever

The attacks also transformed what happened once travellers reached the airport.

The U.S. Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed in November 2001, created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), transferring responsibility for aviation security screening from airlines to the federal government. Over the ensuing years, passenger and baggage screening, watchlists and airport security procedures expanded significantly. 

Canada also overhauled aviation security. The federal government committed more than $2.2 billion to new safety and security measures and established the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) in 2002. Among the changes were tightened cockpit security and expanded airport screening and oversight. 

But some of the consequences were less tangible. Santelli remembers the fear and suspicion that followed the attacks, including racial profiling directed at travellers perceived to be Middle Eastern or Arab.

It was, he said, a painful demonstration of how fear could change the atmosphere of travel almost overnight.

For advisors, meanwhile, client care increasingly meant thinking not only about the mechanics of a trip but also about risk, disruption and what could happen when plans went wrong.

That lesson stayed with Vogel.

“I’m much more cautious because of that experience,” she said.

Today she closely monitors world events and tracks clients’ flights while they are away.

“I always check what is happening in the world as much as possible and steer everyone away from any type of unrest,” she said. “I do my best to keep my travellers safe.”

‘We Had To Find A Way To Keep Going’

For Rams, the parallels between 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic are unavoidable – but so are the differences.

After 9/11, he said, there was no equivalent of the explosion in pent-up demand that came to be known as “revenge travel” following pandemic restrictions.

“We were on our own. Unlike after COVID, there wasn’t a rush to travel and check off all those bucket-list trips,” he said. “There was no such thing as ‘revenge travel.’ People weren’t eager to get back on a plane – they were cautious, uncertain and simply trying to understand what was happening.”

The business consequences were significant. Rams remembers agencies closing, jobs becoming scarce and an industry that looked very different from the network of independent advisors working today.

“Many agencies didn’t survive,” he said. “There were very few jobs, and this was before many independent travel advisors existed.”

He believes the crisis was one of the forces that ultimately helped push the retail travel industry toward new working models, including greater independence among advisors.

Yet perhaps the most enduring lesson from all four advisors is less about business models than resilience.

Twenty-five years later, the industry has faced more terrorism, wars, economic downturns, SARS, natural disasters and a global pandemic. The tools advisors have at their disposal have changed enormously, but the basic job in a crisis – helping a client understand what to do next – remains strikingly familiar.

“We had to find a way to keep going, support our clients and keep our businesses alive during a very uncertain time,” Rams said.

And after surviving one of the most consequential days in modern travel history, he learned something that would prove useful through every crisis that followed.

“Once you’ve lived through something like 9/11 and made it through, you realize just how resilient you can be.”

Lead image caption: National September 11 Memorial, New York City