Operation Yellow Ribbon

Sean Curry.

US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon.

All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

Peter Adam Beardmore.

And who welcomed Americans or anyone trying to fly to the U.S.? Canada.

I think it was called Operation Yellow Ribbon, and they opened their airfields.

There's now a musical about this.

And Cuba opened its airfields.

Does anybody remember that Canada opened its airfields to our planes, to planes trying to land in the United States.

It was called Operation Yellow Ribbon.

There's a play about that.

That NATO invoked Article 5 for the only time in its history, and that troops from Canada and the UK and others fought with us in Afghanistan and lost proportionately more people than we did.

So, again, 32 minutes after the president has been alerted, a third crash into the Pentagon.

And 9.45 a.m., U.S. airspace is shut down entirely under what is dubbed Operation Yellow Ribbon, and all civilian aircraft ordered to land at the nearest airport.

And that quickly spread into an international grounding for quite some time.

And at 9.55 a.m. on Air Force One, President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.

It was about one a second that went down, took about two and a half hours to get all of those planes out of the sky.

And I mentioned Canada was Operation Yellow Ribbon.

All sorts of small Canadian towns absorbed wide-bodied jets and passengers.

And by 1216, three and a half hours after the first plane hit, the U.S. airspace was completely clear of any plane whatsoever.

All passengers aboard instantly killed, as are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.

At 945, U.S. airspace is shut down under what was called Operation Yellow Ribbon.

All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

9.55, Air Force One with President George Bush takes off from Florida.

There'll be a special ceremony, and they're going to be there as part of representing responders from around the world.

Operation Yellow Ribbon at YVR, of course, as all kinds of planes had to land here unexpectedly to be on an airplane that morning.

for your plane to land somewhere where you were not expecting it to land, and then to find out the reason why would have been so unsettling.

So to get that kind of safety and just safe place to be in a time like that, really, really great.

with three targets hit focus hones in on flight 93 the last known hijacked plane airborne in the space of two minutes the white house capitol building and the entire united states airspace is shut down The first ever unplanned suspension of all flights over American airspace.

Operation Yellow Ribbon, aided by Canada, commences.

The orders divert all civilian aircraft away from any potential target as fast as possible, grounding planes over the border in Canadian territory.

In a further display of agency failings, the FAA headquarters decides not to request military assistance for Flight 93.