Travelers navigate chaos, confusion at Atlanta airport
Just before 11 a.m. on Sunday, Mary Ann Van Booren was tucked away in one corner of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, her luggage piled beside her and a salad balanced in her lap.
She had arrived at the airport at 3:30 a.m. for an early flight back to Boston.
“I’d probably be home by 8:30 a.m. to have coffee with the family,” she said.
Instead, she’ll be at the airport until the evening, when she has a standby ticket with JetBlue. There’s no guarantee there will be a seat for her on that flight, or that it won’t be canceled as well. She bought an Atlanta sweatshirt in the event that she has to stay in the airport overnight.
Van Booren just wrapped up a two-week trip visiting her son in Dallas, Georgia. She brought exactly two weeks of medication, which she has now run out of, and she has a pricey medical appointment to get to Tuesday in Boston.
“(Airport staff) have been great,” she said. “They seem a little frazzled, but you know what, we’re a little frazzled.”
As broad flight cuts triggered by the federal government shutdown entered its third day, pockets of travelers like Van Booren sat and stood around the airport, their luggage piled beside them as they waited for delayed flights or attempted to rearrange travel plans.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines canceled more than 380 flights across the country Saturday and more than 470 Sunday to comply with a directive from the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation to reduce flights at 40 major airports.
According to flightaware.com, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Sunday canceled more than 170 departing flights and delayed more than 230.
Although the departure board was peppered with red canceled and delayed notices, the rest of the airport remained orderly, with security wait times hovering around four minutes in the morning. As the day went on, they crept up to 12 minutes.
By around 10 a.m., Laurel Howell and her husband had learned their 12:30 p.m. flight to Miami had been canceled. They were waiting by the exit doors preparing to make the drive instead.
Their cruise would be leaving Monday morning, and they said all other flights to Miami were on standby. The Newnan residents had been informed of the flight cancellation just after getting through security. By that point, most rental cars were booked or too expensive, so some of their friends attending the cruise offered to pick them up to drive the 10 hours to their destination.
“I just wish (the federal government) would hurry up and come to some kind of agreement,” Howell said. “I mean, it’s just getting ridiculous.”
Atlanta resident Bre Stephenson said she made it onto the plane for her flight from Dallas, Texas, to Atlanta. But once they boarded, the flight was canceled and all passengers had to get off the plane.
She finally made it home Sunday morning and was preparing to leave the airport.
“I’m kind of surprised, it seems like it’s still running smooth. Like, I haven’t seen any lines or extra wait times,” she said.
The fast-moving lines can be attributed to people like Gerardo Gomez, a Transportation Security Administration agent based in Chicago. He said he’s been in Atlanta for two weeks now after they brought staff down to help mitigate the staffing shortages from people calling off.
His food and lodging are paid for while he’s in Atlanta, but he hasn’t been earning a salary during the shutdown, and it’s been hard on his family, Gomez said while waiting for a cup of coffee.
He was initially supposed to be in Atlanta for a week, but they extended it to two weeks, and now they just added a third, he said. He could be in Atlanta indefinitely.
This isn’t Gomez’s first time working during a government shutdown. He said he was with the TSA during the last shutdown in 2018.
“We’re expected to know it might be a shutdown, so some of us do save up, some of us don’t,” he said. “I feel like this one’s actually a little worse, just because it’s been longer.”
Lines — and frustration — were growing into Sunday afternoon. A line for rebooking flights with Frontier creeped around the corner, and stressed travelers waited in hopes of finding a way home before the work week.
One pair was trying to get back to the Newark, New Jersey, airport to then drive home to Philadelphia. By Sunday afternoon, they had no flight to take and work looming Monday, so they were trying to plan “some creative connections,” Andrew Le said.
“We might not go home for Thanksgiving just because of the flight situation,” said Le, who’s from Florida but goes to school in Philadelphia.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday he believes air travel will be “reduced to a trickle” ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
“The two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle. We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays, they want to see their family, they want to celebrate this great American holiday,” Duffy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if (the government) doesn’t open back up.”
It was a nightmare travel day for the Harrison family, who were trying to get back to Memphis, Tennessee, after a vacation in Florida.
They flew out of Jacksonville on Saturday morning, but when they were about 20 miles away from Atlanta, the captain said they would have to circle for 90 minutes while waiting for air traffic controllers to become available, Vance Harrison said.
Once they landed, their flight to Memphis was delayed several times and finally canceled. The Harrisons, along with throngs of other people, tried to rent a car late that night, but none were available. They managed to book one of the last hotel rooms in the area, Dena Harrison said.
They have another flight scheduled for 4 p.m., assuming it isn’t canceled. When asked if they have any upcoming travel plans, Vance Harrison replied with a succinct, “Hell, no.”
About the Author
Olivia Wakim is a digital content producer on the food and dining team. She joined the AJC as an intern in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia with a journalism degree. While in school, she reported for The Red & Black, Grady Newsource and the Marietta Daily Journal.
