Unclaimed baggage sits inside JFK Airport's Terminal 4 on Saturday. The airport suffered from equipment malfunctions and delays in the days after the first snowstorm of 2018. (ELIZABETH KEOGH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Travelers at JFK Airport were getting snow where fast Saturday.
Two days after the last flake fell, JFK was reeling from the first snowstorm of 2018 with equipment malfunctions, dozens of delayed flights and scores of unhappy customers.
“We’ve been here since 8 a.m., and our flight keeps getting pushed back,” Leah Golubchick told the Daily News Saturday. “At first they said the baggage machine was frozen, so they were unable to take the bags off the plane. Now they said that the plane is snowed in at the hangar!”
“How is 6 inches of snow enough to block a hangar?” the 31-year-old Brooklyn resident asked. “The flight crew and pilots are all here. They’ve been joking about grabbing shovels to help dig the plane out.”
Golubchick’s travel problems began Thursday, when the storm forced her original Delta Airlines flight to Denver to be cancelled. She was ultimately put on Saturday’s flight — but the plane didn’t budge.
“They’re not even announcing the delays anymore,” she said. “They’re just putting it up on the screen.”
A Delta spokeswoman said Saturday night that no additional flight cancellations were expected, and crews were focused on reuniting passengers with their luggage.
Kenneth Watson, an Army vet and graduate student from St. Cloud, Minn., showed up early for his 10:30 a.m. Sun Country Airlines flight to Minneapolis. He left the airport seven hours later — but he wasn’t flying.
“I checked the board and it said it was going to be delayed, and then it was just canceled,” Watson, 38, said. “No one told us anything. There was so much chaos. There were probably tens of thousands of people. It was like I was in a basketball arena.”
Ryan Harrison and his family were all set to return home to Johannesburg when their flight was unexpectedly canceled.
“The woman in the ticketing station just closed up,” he said. “She just refused to help us and put up a sign that said she would open up 10 a.m. tomorrow.
JetBlue airplanes wait at the gates outside JFK's Terminal 5 on Thursday. (REBECCA BUTALA HOW/GETTY IMAGES)
“When we asked her where we are going to sleep, she said, ‘On the floor. I don’t care.’ ”
The Harrisons were trying to rent a car to Atlantic City, hoping to score a flight there.
Travel woes continued through Saturday night, with Port Authority and NYPD officers being dispatched to break up a “disturbance” over a canceled flight in Terminal 4, according to Virgin Atlantic.
“We are sharing a gate with another airline, and they have just cancelled their flight, causing the disturbance and the police being called,” the airline tweeted just after midnight.
“Our flight is operating and our teams are now moving our customers through the gate so they can board our aircraft.”
Travelers wait at the baggage carousels, many of which weren’t working. (ELIZABETH KEOGH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Passenger Jeremy Silver described the late-night madness at gate B23 as a “near riot” when travelers learned of their canceled XL Airways flight.
“It seems as if some punches were thrown as people jostled,” Silver said. “The crowd went nuts booing and shouting.”
Silver boarded a bus with fellow Virgin flyers bound for London, leaving behind the stranded XL passengers.
“Never seen anything like this level of chaos,” Silver added.
Ian Parra, 36, of Manhattan, was on his honeymoon in Dubai when his troubles started.
Wow. Diverted aircraft from two days ago are still flying back to @JFKairport. And there's still no gate space for pretty much anything right now. pic.twitter.com/gEnSzBwAk7
— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) January 6, 2018
“I paid $10,000 for two business class tickets,” Parra said. “It was delayed for over 24 hours. They are totally unprepared for something they should have seen coming.”
In one terminal, fed-up passengers took it upon themselves to make room on a clogged carousel in the domestic baggage claim after waiting for their luggage for more than an hour.
The chute was frequently stopped by the scattering of belongings on it, with no airport workers around to clear unclaimed bags after a slew of red-eye flights landed Saturday morning.
Several travelers took to Twitter, outraged that their flights had been delayed or that they were stuck on the tarmac for hours after landing.
“Landed almost 4 hours back,” Derek Yach tweeted. “May deplane into buses but many planes are trapped unable to do so. We have no idea how long.”
The bus ride from our 7-hour stranded flight on @JFKAirport TarMac shows we were far away from any gates and in serious snow-pack. Why have us land here? #JFKDelayspic.twitter.com/QV86O0ra5b
— missmonet (@jennimonet) January 6, 2018
Imogen Caird, who flew into the airport from Argentina, agreed.
“#JFK is an EMBARRASSMENT,” she wrote. “(Five) hours in the airport with no information regarding the status of our bags. There are pregnant women, babies and children on this flight. There is no toilet, food or water available. Disgraceful.”
After being shut down for nearly a day as 8 inches of snow covered the airport, JFK reopened at 7 a.m. Friday. It didn’t take long for the problems to pile up.
But Kennedy was alone in its misery.
Airport traffic was running smoothly at LaGuardia Airport Saturday, according to sources.
JFK Airport officials have yet to give a reason for the delays or explain when the problems will be fixed.(REBECCA BUTALA HOW/GETTY IMAGES)
The only problem at Newark Liberty International Airport was the AirTrain, which went out of service Saturday. Nine people had to be evacuated from a stalled train, but no injuries were reported.
Port Authority sources said most of the JFK trouble was at the International terminal and also at Terminal 4.
Airline companies at the terminals were slow in alerting airport personnel that their gates were getting backed up, causing many of the delays, the sources said.
Since arriving flights weren’t reaching their gates, luggage had to be offloaded by hand miles from the terminals, creating more delays and a sea of baggage as far as the eye could see.
Several luggage carousels were also left inoperable by the freezing temperatures, travelers said.
An airport spokesman said Saturday a plan was underway to divert international flights from JFK in the short term as crews try to catch up with current arrivals.
“The Port Authority is working diligently with the FAA, airlines, and individual terminal operators to limit the arrival of flights into JFK Airport, until there are adequate gates available to handle the backlog of flights due to recovery of flight schedules in the wake of Thursday’s storm,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The Port Authority also blamed the “continued bitter cold” for “severely disabled equipment” which contributed to delays.
- ny news
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