Riley Alexis Holmes arrived at New York’s Kennedy Airport on Friday evening with a ticket to Oregon, where she has plans to see her brother’s closing night in the musical “Trolls Junior.”
First, she got word that her 6 p.m. flight was delayed almost two hours. Then came the news that it was canceled.
“I called my mom and cried, and I’m just like sitting here waiting for information,” Holmes, 24, told Business Insider as a nationwide ground stop dragged on into the night, delaying or canceling thousands of flights and stranding thousands upon thousands of passengers across the country.
That included Juliana Melo, 30, from Sao Paolo, Brazil, who was heading home to her 1-year-old daughter after a week’s vacation in New York City.
“She’s waiting for us in Brazil with my mother and the babysitter. So we are very nervous,” Melo said at JFK, where fellow passengers crowded gates and sat on the floor with anxious faces.
She said the airline had not yet contacted them to reschedule, so Melo and her husband were waiting at Terminal 4 for any updates.
Officials say the FAA grounded flights out of an “abundance of caution” after a telecommunications issue, but has not yet said what caused it. It’s also unclear how long it will be before air traffic returns to normal.
Lennard Meijer, 49, traveled from Amsterdam to New York for a one-week business trip and was supposed to return to Amsterdam on Thursday night. Due to weather conditions, his flight was delayed and then canceled. He was rebooked and then canceled for a second time, losing access to his checked bag in the process.
After waiting for an hour and a half in line, he got his bag back, and was finally able to get a seat on a Delta flight scheduled to leave at 10:35 p.m. Friday. He’s afraid to check his bag again.
“I’m half waiting for news, half deciding to take some basic stuff out of here. So if I have another cancellation tonight, when I go back to the city and find another hotel last minute, I’ll at least have some clothes,” he said.
Meijer said he’s clinging to hope his flight might take off. “It’s just a little exhausted being at JFK, and I can’t wait to go home,” he said.
Kieran Cullen, 27, had been traveling for over 24 hours after his overseas deployment ended. He was headed home to Jacksonville, Florida, stopping at JFK for a layover.
“We were only expecting to be here for about five hours,” he said.
Then he said he started receiving text messages. The flight was delayed for 15 minutes. Then again for another 15 minutes. Hours later, he said, he finally got word his flight was canceled.
“So far, not a ton of information, other than just live speaker announcements discussing the centers having rotating blackouts on frequencies, but nothing specific,” he said. “It’s over 24 hours of travel, so it’s definitely a bummer.”
Cullen and his group plan to stay in New Jersey for the night and hope to get a flight home for Sunday.
Holmes said Delta told her that if she does not reschedule her flight to Oregon in the next 24 hours, she can get a full refund. If she decides to reschedule the flight, she will not get her money back. She was waiting to see if she could get on a flight that would allow her to see her brother’s final performance.
“My first initial reaction was I was very sad, but then I was really grateful that I’m OK and that everyone hopefully is OK,” she said.
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