As Attica continued to spiral further out of control, Pineland citizens began flying to Attica on their own to help fellow citizens and their Attican allies to escape. Many of them were veterans of the Attican conflict, old men who still had contact with those they had worked with over the years. Others sought to get the Attican Christians out before the Islamic Congress killed them for the sin of converting to another religion. These mixed groups of veterans and civilians saved tens of thousands of Pineland and Attican civilians in the days before the Pineland administration stepped in. They demanded that other nations stop accepting civilian refugee flights, stopped giving planes filled with refugees clearance to launch, and began threatening to cancel the licenses of pilots that worked with these organizations if they continued to do so.