Atlanta airport crowed with stranded travelers

Welcome back in, everyone. We are taking a live look at some of your comments as we continue to cover this nationwide ground stop. A limited amount of planes taking off, we understand. And this is from viewer Sharon Swint, who was driving into Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International, Tom, and she says it's eerie driving into the airport and not seeing any planes flying in or out earlier. Yeah, usually you see one coming overhead real close, too, But not tonight. Marissa. It says, stuck on ATL waiting for a flight to Key West. Boy, I'd much rather be in Key West than in Atlanta Airport waiting for my flight. Oh my goodness, it's so true. And then Amy DeGraff saying, you're stuck on a plane here in Atlanta since 4.40. No gates to go to to the plane. Could be hours. We have a baby on board wearing her last diaper. Oh my goodness. You know, that is the situation, Tom, that I always think about because if you have these planes that have nowhere to go, what do you start to do? What if someone, I mean, that is for the crew to figure out, I suppose, and to let air traffic control know, but my heart just goes out that I hope this situation is resolved because that's scary. I wonder what the statute of limitations, like how long before they have to pull up a set of stairs and get people off these planes. Lori saying, de-planed in Florida, trying to make it back. I don't know, but we're going to head out to Hernan Gutierrez right now. To find out the perspective Hernan from where you are in the midst of this. Let's just call it what it is historic FAA ground stop Yeah, it's one of those things that when you're on the ground you can tell and this might seem like a duh statement But you can tell that something is very obviously going on I'm just gonna go ahead and turn my phone around here so you guys can see this Mass of people that's just forming in front of me. This is the south terminal. I just got here into the building maybe a Two, three, four minutes ago and headed straight to the South Terminal from the North Terminal. And it's just madness. I had a chance to speak to a couple of different people who are living through this. One couple that I ran into says that they actually didn't officially get noticed that their flight got canceled at all. So they just kind of thought it was better safe than sorry and headed out here to the airport. They Ubered here. So, they didn't find out that their flight was cancelled until they got here, so a lot of confusion amongst passengers right now. It looks like this is the baggage claim, so there's still some confusion here too, even. It seems like... Just kind of basing off of what I'm seeing there goes my camera basing off of what I'm seeing Lots of crowds here lots of like questions. Just being overheard. You know, what are we gonna do? What's next stuff like that? We actually got to hear from a producer of ours Marcy Williams. She produces our morning show who had A flight canceled this afternoon. Let's hear from her. She was supposed to fly out at 8 tonight So I got to the Doraville station and literally as soon as I sat down on the train, I got a text message from Southwest saying that my flight was canceled. And so I immediately got up and yeah, I was headed to Dallas. My flight was for, it was set for eight o'clock tonight. It got, initially it was delayed to depart at 9.15 and then after the departure was delayed, they just went ahead and canceled it. It's very crazy because it was actually another one of our co-workers who told me that there was a ground stop because she knew I had a flight tonight. And so to kind of be the story, I don't know, it's it's unreal. But again, I'm very glad that. You know, I'm not stuck at the airport because there are people who had already made it to the airport, probably went through security to, you know, got to their gate and now they're just, you know, either sitting there or trying to make other accommodations. And so, you know, thankfully that isn't my case. Now, something that kind of developed while that soundbite was playing on air, this massive people started heading that direction, not quite exactly sure why, what's going on over there. One thing that I will mention, kind of reiterating something that our Christopher King mentioned earlier this hour, I went and looked at security and things are going by very smoothly for whatever reason people are going through, whether it's just finding some place to be While this all goes down, but clearly a lot to figure out. figure out still especially me as I'm just getting here trying to see where people are headed just now. Well, Hernán, it's really crazy to think, but if you have a flight and you're trying to figure out a spot to stake all this out, the eating options are better past security. So, you know, for practicality, if you're looking for a place to lay your head tonight, I bet some travelers are considering your options like that. Yeah, real estate becoming a hot commodity there at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Hernán Gutiérrez, Hernán, thanks. Want to get to our Christopher King. Okay. Far from where Hernán is there in the main terminal area. Christopher, what are you seeing? Well, Tom and Errol, here's what we see right now. Take a look up here. This board, this departure board. There are always delays and cancellations. It's gotten worse throughout the night. Now, let's come back down to the ground here. Remember how I was saying earlier it looked like a normal Friday night? Not like that anymore. It is jam-packed in here. This airport is crowded. The folks you see over here in this area, they are waiting to rebook their flights. They don't know when they're going to go out. Let's go to this family over here real quickly. Hey, folks, what's your name? Thomas. And where are you from? Colorado. And how long have you been here? Five, six hours now. And how frustrating is this? Overly frustrating. It's unfortunate, honestly, that we're stuck here. Planning on going on a trip, planning on... I'm enjoying little baby girl's birthday, and it feels like everything's kind of wasted away. Any idea what's going to happen? That's kind of the fear, is not knowing what's going to happen, so that's where we're at right now. Folks, thank you so much. Good luck to you. That's the way it is right here at Hartsfield-Jackson. Back to you. Christopher King live in the airport with despondent travelers waiting for some kind of word that things are going to straighten out, hopefully for those folks, very, very soon. As we continue, you can watch the latest with our coverage on Fox Local. We'll be bringing the remarks of the Trump administration to you live when they happen. Thank you, everyone. The question is, what happened? Those are some of the answers we're hoping to hear from Mark Way Mullen, Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. They'll be stepping out to the podium here. You can watch our continuing coverage on our stream. Red Clay Rundown on Fox Local is coming up next. Thanks so much for joining us for our special coverage of this national FAA ground stop. Have a great night.