Passengers temporarily locked out of airport concourses
The underground tunnel between the entry and the gates at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was locked down for about half an hour Wednesday, temporarily stranding passengers.
The lockdown was ordered after smoke started wafting into the tunnel, which holds trains that carry people between the security checkpoints and the concourses where planes depart.
"It caused us to stop the train, but it was not on the train itself," airport spokesman John Kennedy told the AJC just after 2 p.m.
Authorities also shut down the pedestrian passage that parallels the train tracks, cutting off public access to most of the gates and forcing people to wait outside the security checkpoints.
"We halted security screening maybe 10 minutes to prevent people piling up," Kennedy said.
The incident occurred at 1:08 p.m., Katena Carvajales, an airport spokeswoman, told the AJC.
The shutdown affected the stretch between concourses A and B, which is nearest to the terminal. It's closure cut off passage between the terminal and concourses B through E. Only Concourse T, which is adjacent to the terminal, was unaffected.
The pedestrian passage was reopened after about half an hour and the train was running by around 2 p.m., Kennedy said.
The airport's biggest airline, Delta Air Lines, delayed flights to get as many passengers aboard as possible, said Anthony Black, a company spokesman.
"We had a few dozen flights that were delayed up to 15 to 20 minutes," he said. A handful of passengers missed their flights and had to catch a later plane, he said.
Passenger Chris Huttman, 30, of Atlanta, said most people in the airport seemed unperturbed. He had eaten at a restaurant on Concourse A and was headed into the tunnel on an escalator to get to his flight on Concourse D when a fire alarm sounded.
He noticed a smell of an electrical fire but didn't see much smoke, so he continued on his way and got to his gate before the tunnel was shut.
He later heard airport employees complaining that they couldn't leave after their shifts because of the shuttered tunnel, but he said passengers took the incident in stride.
In an era fraught with terrorism, no one seemed worried, Huttman said.
"I would think if it's a terrorist attack, there would be more than a fire alarm going off," he said.
Keith Newport, 32, of Duluth, said passengers filled the tunnel after it was shut down.
Most people didn't seem to realize that the traffic jam was the result of the closed exits, he said.
"For the most part, everyone was very calm, everyone seemed more concerned about making their flight," he told the AJC in an e-mail. He said that when the passage was reopened, he was hit with an "intense" smell of smoke and saw firefighters lining the walls as the alarms still continued ringing.
By 4:30 p.m., officials still had not identified the source of the problem.
About the Author
Ty Tagami is a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Since joining the newspaper in 2002, he has written about everything from hurricanes to homelessness. He has deep experience covering local government and education, and can often be found under the Gold Dome when lawmakers meet or in a school somewhere in the state.
