LOGANVILLE, Ga. — A group from Graystone Church in Loganville planned a trip to the Holy Land for 42 people. Now a handful of them are struggling to get home.
Ten of those in the group had a connecting flight at JFK airport in New York before flying into Tel Aviv in Israel. After a delay, the flight took off early Saturday morning.
"Nobody in our group had been here before, so we were all really looking forward to it," said Wayne Shelmutt, one of the ten people in the group on board.
He said they were not aware of what was going on in Israel when they were flying, noting the TVs on board the plane were not working.
"We were pretty much landed in the war zone and then left there by Delta, but with no place to go other than our hotel," he recalled.
Delta said the crew was hours into the flight when they learned what was going on in Israel.
Shelmutt said the group was told Netanya, the city they were staying in, was safe. But he said on the way to the hotel from Tel Aviv, there was endless commotion.
"Cars started flying over to the right," he remembered. "People were jumping out of their cars and laying up under their cars."
He said the group struggled to get a flight out. Shelmutt said they were told to stay in the hotel and reassured there was a bomb shelter underground if needed.
Two days later, they got on a flight to Cypress.
However, when they were back at the airport in Tel Aviv, he said there was a bomb scare.
"Four of us were shoved into an office and six of us were shoved into a room," he said. "And of course, you had people, women, children crying, people screaming, running people over."
Shelmutt said he and the group are now in Cypress, each finding different ways to get back home later this week, with a new perspective on what is happening overseas.
"I think we've all seen it on the news, but you don't understand just how scary it is until you're actually in the middle of it," he said. "We've all kind of commented on how tough it must be for the people of Israel to live like this. But it's definitely tense and a scary time to be over here."
Delta said it canceled its Delta-operated flights to Tel Aviv for the remainder of the month. It added it is working on getting customers in Tel Aviv seats on partner airlines.