Stranded in Atlanta, travelers at world’s busiest airport hope worst is over
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North Carolina resident Belinda Sukeena just wanted to get back home from the turquoise waters of Turks and Caicos Islands.
Instead, she slept on the second floor of the atrium at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Sukeena was among many travelers still stranded at the Atlanta airport Saturday after Friday’s hourslong nationwide ground stop paralyzed the U.S. aviation system, delaying and canceling thousands of weekend flights. Government officials, during a Saturday news conference, again emphasized they found no evidence of nefarious activity, such as a cyberattack, and said the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the ground stop after the nation’s air traffic control system was overwhelmed while a contractor was upgrading equipment.
Federal officials expressed optimism conditions should ease by Sunday, though Delta Air Lines urged flexible travelers to move weekend flights to Monday or later.
More than 5,800 of roughly 41,000 scheduled flights nationwide had been canceled by Saturday midafternoon, with more than 500 of them to and from the Atlanta airport, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Early reports from the site showed another 200-plus canceled Sunday flights across the U.S. The chaos caused pain for business travelers and vacationers and disrupted some fun-seekers’ weekend plans for football games and music festivals.
“We will still have delays and cancellations (Saturday), but that will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow,” head of the FAA, Bryan Bedford, said Saturday from Washington, D.C. “I do think the worst is behind us.”
For Sukeena, the worst was far from over when the ground stop lifted just after 8 p.m. Friday. Her flight home was delayed until around 1 a.m. and she ended up having to disembark after the pilot timed out. Then, she couldn’t find a hotel or rental car.
“Makes me not want to travel again for a very long time,” Sukeena said early Saturday morning. “Just being completely stuck reminded me how good we have it usually.”
With fewer flights, Hartsfield-Jackson on Saturday seemed calm after such a major event. Wait times for security lines hovered around 20 minutes or less for most of the morning and decreased into the afternoon.
Midtown resident Peter Faas said he was shocked how “normal” the airport appeared around 7 a.m. His family had planned to travel to Phoenix to play golf, but their flight got canceled. Faas was hopeful to make it out of town Saturday.
“I came here last night, and the place was crazy,” he said. “I can’t believe how few people are here right now … Where did all the people go?”
Bedford said officials found “zero evidence of anything nefarious and zero evidence of anything AI-related” that led to the most significant ground stop since the one immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Instead, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed either user error or faulty equipment.
He said a contractor, L3Harris, was installing fiber optic lines to replace aging copper wires at a remote, unspecified location. Either a faulty router or incorrect installation triggered a malfunction that overwhelmed the air traffic control system and threatened flight safety, Duffy said.
L3Harris, in a statement, touted “safety and reliability” as its highest priorities as it works to modernize communication systems and said it’s supporting the FAA investigation into what happened.
When officials issued the national ground stop “out of an abundance of caution,” 3,500 flights were in the air. A total of 12,000 flights nationwide were canceled Friday, including 9,000 commercial and 3,000 private flights. In Atlanta, around 750 flights were canceled Friday, according to FlightAware.
Cousins Alex Gomez and April Espinoza of Tampa, Florida, had planned to be at the Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival this weekend in Los Angeles. The ground stop meant they got stuck in Atlanta on a layover and ended up among the people camped out in the airport atrium.
Early Saturday morning, Espinoza was spritzing dry shampoo in her hair as the cousins waited on a family member to drive up from Tampa and bring them home. There would be no music festival.
“There’s no Ubers. There’s no rentals. There’s no hotels. There’s like nothing,” she said.
California resident Bill Sendell, who was on a business trip in Atlanta but got stranded trying to get home, managed to book a hotel room for Saturday night.
But Saturday morning, running on no sleep, Sendell was admittedly a little “crabby” as he waited for hours at the baggage claim trying to get his checked luggage back. He said he had a fight scheduled Sunday to return to the West Coast.
“I have to say, it’s been really nice to see how calm and kind everybody’s been,” he said. “I haven’t really seen anybody get upset … It just seems like everybody’s kind of working together.”
Some passengers who did have flights departing Saturday were cautiously optimistic.
Dave Freedman, his wife, Michelle Simon, and their 21-month-old daughter arrived at the Atlanta airport just after 9 a.m., hoping to make it back to their home in New York City.
At that time, their Delta flight was on schedule, but Freedman said he booked another flight “just in case.”
“We’re expecting the worst and hoping for the best,” Simon added. “We’re hopeful we’ll get back to New York.”
Another traveler was determined to get where he was going, despite the inconvenience.
Kevin Hart of Columbia, South Carolina, said his hometown flight to Las Vegas was canceled Saturday. But he was able to book another flight out of Atlanta, so he drove about three hours to the Peach State early in the morning.
“I packed my patience,” said Hart, who was headed to see the Las Vegas Raiders play defending Super Bowl champions the Seattle Seahawks, a game set for Sunday. “We tried to give it plenty of time.”