Love? No, just thousands of dispirited, stranded passengers, actually

Detailed summary

American air travel is rarely glamorous, but when the system works, it is pretty impressive. When it fails, it’s miserable.

Washington: At the end of the film Love Actually, the split screen gradually expands to show hundreds of different scenes from airports: people hugging, crying, saying their hellos or goodbyes. It serves as a touching reminder that everyone has a story; we all matter to somebody.

It was somewhat the opposite at airports across the United States on Friday afternoon – hundreds of thousands of people clutching phones, hastily revising plans, corralling bored children, waiting in line to rebook flights, searching for luggage, queueing at Starbucks or the airport bar.

US airspace handles about 45,000 flights a day, through some of the world’s busiest airports: Chicago’s O’Hare, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, Texas’ Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s rarely glamorous, but when the system works, it is pretty impressive. When it fails, it’s miserable.

Such was the case when the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered an exceedingly rare nationwide ground stop after technical problems plagued critical air traffic control systems. About 15,000 flights were either cancelled or delayed, affecting millions of passengers and their families.

At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, 31-year-old Madeline DeMaske was hoping to head home to Denver, Colorado after a whirlwind work trip to the nation’s capital. “Now I get one more day in DC,” she said. “Hopefully only one more day.”

DeMaske was already on board her plane, about to start taxiing, when the pilot and gate agent entered to tell passengers they were stuck on the tarmac. She waited at the terminal for hours, hearing rumours that things might change soon. “My flight was cancelled five minutes before [the flight ban] was lifted.”

Some gates inside the terminal were quiet, DeMaske said, but others were “very chaotic”, with long lines at the information desk. Other people said that while there was a scramble for phone charging stations, Washington’s city airport retained its reputation for being pretty calm and genial.

DeMaske…

Rob…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Sydney Morning Herald. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.