Airport Woes In Atlanta Impacting DFW Travelers
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Sunday's power outage at Atlanta's Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport ended up grounding more than 1,000 flights and causing a ripple effect across the nation – including on travelers in North Texas.
A power outage caused by a fire in an underground electrical facility at the Atlanta airport brought things to a standstill around lunchtime on Sunday. Power was restored around midnight, but travel woes are expected to linger for days.
At the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport workers at the Delta Airlines ticket counter are busy trying to get passengers home for the holidays, to work and wherever their destination. While getting in the air is the ultimate goal, getting off the ground is even proving problematic – with some passengers waiting more than half an hour just to check their baggage.
Most of the travelers who spoke with CBS 11 News Monday morning said they aren't even connecting through Atlanta – proving the chaos caused in Georgia is impacting both DFW and Dallas Love Field Airport.
Hundreds of thousands of travelers have been delayed or stranded and that includes Delta passengers heading into and out of DFW.
One woman at the airport this morning said her flight from Dallas to Cincinnati is on time, but she'll be stuck there because she can't connect from Cincinnati to Atlanta. Situations like that are making for a tense Monday morning. DFW traveler Larry Judge said simply, "I'm a little frustrated… a little frustrated."
There's just one week until Christmas, but even the holiday travel rush doesn't bring long lines to North Texas airports at 4:30 in the morning – but that's what travelers like Stephanie Horlacher found. "No, not at all not this early," she said. Usually I just go straight through and then go thorough the checkpoint."
Horlacher, a Royce City resident, travels to Salt Lake City every other week for work and this morning found herself amongst those at risk of missing what was supposed to be an on-time flight. "It's busy we've got… been standing here for probably about 35 minutes and it [the line] really hasn't moved very much."
By 7:00 a.m. the lines at ticket counters began thinning out at DFW. Lines that earlier in the morning stretched past the exit doors were barely backed up to check-in kiosks.
The first three Delta flights scheduled to Atlanta from DFW were canceled. At Love Field, two Southwest Airlines flights scheduled to leave at 6:00 a.m. took off as planned, but a few Delta and American flights were grounded.
Several airlines, including Delta, America and Southwest at Love Field, are allowing passengers impacted on Sunday and today to make a one-time change for free.
Meanwhile, anyone traveling by air today is being advised to get to the airport extra early. Some people at DFW were still concerned they would miss their flights or connections because of the lines here and at other airports.
