Stranded at LaGuardia: Travelers scramble as nationwide FAA ground stop halts flights

our colleague Kelly Kennedy who is at LaGuardia Airport. Kelly, have you been able to talk to anyone? What's going on there? Oh yes, Steve, I have. As you can imagine, a lot of people here are stressed out. It's really chaotic here at LaGuardia. We obviously haven't been inside yet, but from what I've been hearing from travelers, the bars are all packed, the rental car areas are packed, people are scrambling, trying to charge their phones, trying to find hotels, arrange alternate transportation. People just shocked that something like this could happen. And we actually talked to one couple, They're from St. Louis. They got lucky, they landed right before this ground stop went into effect. Talk to me about what happened while you guys were on the plane. Hi, thanks for having us. So it started this morning at home close to St. Louis, and we got text messages from Southwest at about 9 a.m., and our flight was supposed to leave at 12 p.m. Central. And we kept getting these messages about delays and in the text messages from Southwest they were saying there was like ground disruption in LaGuardia, and then while we were flying a little bit ago, we just landed while we were flying we were getting messages that there was some kind of FAA FAA, uh... ground stop throughout the country. So in the plane we actually had to circle around for like an extra 30 minutes because we weren't able to land. They kept saying communication issues and yeah it took about another hour for us to land and then when we did land it's just been chaotic here. It's packed. He went and got our luggage. I went and got the rental car and the rental car area is insane. It's lines out the wazoo right now. And I think we're pretty fortunate because what we've heard from other people is a lot of flights coming here from all over the country were canceled yesterday. And what we heard in the airport on our way to the baggage claim was more flights tonight being canceled because of this. I think it's an ATC issue is from what we've heard. So we're just happy to be here, and we hope everyone else, we hope the situation gets resolved soon. No, that's a good point. I think there was about 720 flights that were delayed across LaGuardia and JFK yesterday. That was due to weather. Now this, you know, that was due to weather related. This is a separate issue, but still obviously not a good week, a good weekend to travel. I guess just overall, how lucky do you guys feel that you made it to your destination? Yeah, we're, like I said, we're really happy to be here and we're happy everybody's safe. And I mean, at the end of the day, it's all about safety. So if there's issues with ATC, I mean, what else, what can we do? I mean, we're just some of the lucky ones that were able to land and kind of go on our way. Yeah, no, I just, hopefully we get out of here on time Monday. If not, maybe we might be driving several hours to get home. Thank you guys so much for your time. We appreciate it. At least they're going to St. Louis, so it's close enough where they could drive home if they have to. But again, at this point, we're still trying to figure out exactly how long this is going to last. There are a lot of unknowns here. We also spoke with some other travelers. I want to go to those clips now. The pilot came on and let us know that there was a ground stop, that we were fine, that he had already communicated that we could land. So we checked it out and looked at the news articles and talked to our kids and figured out we were fine. So do you feel pretty lucky right now? Yeah, looking at that airport, it's pretty packed. There's a lot of people that are going to be maybe stuck there for a while. Yeah, can you just describe what it was like inside the airport? The bars are packed. All of the areas to sit down are absolutely jammed. Everybody's charging their phones and trying to get ready for who knows how long a wait. And just to put into perspective how rare this is, this is only the third time we've had a nationwide ground stop in the past 25 years. The first was with 9-11. The other was. uh computer issue back in 2023. I also spoke with another woman we'll try to get her on later but my heart broke for her because she's actually from Queens but she's trying to get out for her grandpa's 90th birthday and her family lives all over and it doesn't look like anyone's going to be able to make it out so she's just crossing her fingers that she can find a way and it's it's out west so not really drivable um so hopefully her grandpa won't be alone for for his birthday, but again, we're here at LaGuardia. We're going to keep trying. Talking with travelers, we're going to monitor the situation, but right now we know the bars are packed, the rental car areas are packed, a lot of people just scrambling to find a place to stay or alternative transportation. For now, that's the latest here live at LaGuardia. I'm Kelly Kennedy. I'll send it back to you guys.