'Complete mayhem'
At La Guardia, passengers were back on the TSA line to catch a late flight. Other passengers left exasperated.
Meanwhile, an earlier announcement that the airports were closing had some stranded passengers confused. The Port Authority later said passengers could remain at the airport.
Tim Richards, 66, of Camden, South Carolina, sat on the airport floor near the baggage area trying to secure a hotel on his laptop because his next flight isn’t until Saturday evening.
“It's complete mayhem,” he said. And he hasn’t received clarity from any level of staffing.
“There seems to be a lot of confusion when you go up to talk to somebody. They're just ill prepared for anything like this, and you get a lot of conflicting stories,” Richards said.
He added that he saw pilots lingering around also looked confused.
And recouping his checked-in luggage turned into a bigger issue than he had bargained for. Nobody told him he needed to check in with the American Airlines desk first.
“You had to get in line to claim there, so we waited down here for it to come up, and it didn't. And then we finally figured that out. So there's a lot of confusion. I think they're doing what they can. In fact, a couple people have been very nice, but a lot of them have been very frustrated because they just didn't know what to do.”
Lorena Mongelli has been reporting for Newsday since 2021. Prior to that, she covered breaking news at the New York Post.
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