Travelers across the United States on Saturday morning were still feeling the frustrating, plan-ruining aftershocks of the ground stop that halted air travel for hours on Friday.
“I’ve been right here for 20 hours,” said Jasmine Harp, a passenger at Kennedy International Airport in New York. “I have not showered, I have not slept. It’s torture.”
Ms. Harp, 25, was going on 48 hours of travel, trying to get home to Detroit after spending a week in Paris for her birthday.
She had just sat down in her airplane seat on Friday when the pilot told passengers to deplane. A few hours later, the flight was canceled. She described a mad dash to the baggage claim, where passengers worked to secure their luggage.
“They just dumped everybody’s bags off all at once,” she said. “It was chaotic.”
To make matters worse, Ms. Harp had left the gate area but still had to wait for her rebooked flight, which was to depart at 3 p.m. the next day. That meant no restaurants, no shops and, most uncomfortably, no seats. She found a luggage counter to perch on.
“I wish they would let me in the lounge,” she said Saturday morning, as she broke out some trail mix that she had rationed throughout the night.
Antonio Alemán, 39, whose transfer to Lima, Peru was canceled late on Friday, spent an uncomfortable night at the same airport. The airline, Latam, rebooked him on a flight for Tuesday. “I don’t know where I will stay until then,” he said.
Further south, the scene at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport looked, at first glance, as if it might have been a typical Saturday morning, with passengers checking bags and waiting at security checkpoints.
A closer inspection, however, revealed travelers sleeping in the airport’s quiet corners, departure screens speckled with cancellation and delay notices, and backups at customer service desks.
Barefoot and sprawled out on the carpeted floor in Hartsfield-Jackson’s central atrium, Glory Agunbiade, 16, and her mother, Itanola Agunbiade, 56, had managed to steal four or five hours of sleep after their Friday flight to Indianapolis was canceled.
From their makeshift campsite — they each used their bags as pillows — the pair bickered over how the federal government had handled Friday’s ground stop. While the elder Ms. Agunbiade saw the decision to halt flights as a necessary precaution and said it was “not anybody’s fault,” her teenage daughter was more frustrated.
“It’s like all we know is that the problem was about communication,” the younger Ms. Agunbiade said. “I feel like we’re entitled to more information.”
In Chicago, Pedro and Aorbys Vasquez were resting at O’Hare International Airport on Saturday, more than 12 hours after their connecting flight to Paris was supposed to leave. Their original flight was delayed six times before it was finally canceled. By that point, they could not find an available hotel room.
The couple slept in seats with nothing more than neck pillows to comfort them. Their new flight is scheduled for 6:45 p.m., 24 hours after they were originally scheduled to depart.
Looking at the bright side of an experience he called exhausting, Vasquez joked, “at least we shouldn’t have a problem sleeping on our flight.”
Robert Chiarito and Sean Keenan contributed reporting.
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