The Story of the 9/11 “Flight 15 Scholarship Fund”

It's been 13 years today since that Tuesday in 2001. Nothing will change how sad that day was, but there are some little known stories of compassion and teamwork from that day.

One of them is the role some small towns in Canada played, when almost 5000 commercial airplanes, carrying around a million passengers, had to be grounded. Not only were thousands of airplanes flying over the U.S. that day, but there were hundreds inbound over the North Atlantic. When the FAA ordered them all to land, some inbound, transatlantic flights had no place to go but Canada. The airports in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were not equipped to handle several jumbo jets landing in a short amount of time - but they got it done and the people of northeastern Canada pitched in to help - some by taking total strangers into their homes for several days.

Afterwards, none of the Canadians asked to be paid for what they did, but groups of passengers started private funds for renovation projects and a "Flight 15" scholarship fund.

It's a great story. Here's the article in the New York Times from November of 2001.

Some people got emails about this story and didn't believe them. That's why it ended up on Snopes.com.

Here's their explanation.

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