ATLANTA — Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport was a bit of a mess Friday due to the cyber outage, which grounded flights around the world.
This was a poorly timed outage for thousands of people who flew to, from or through Atlanta’s airport over much of Friday.
"They delayed us from seven to eight to midnight to 1 a.m.," recalled Cassandra Wynn of Lawrenceville, who is trying to get on a cruise ship in Alaska.
"Then today, we get the outage that happened and now we’re still canceled," she said Friday.
Morning aerial footage of Atlanta's airport showed planes at a standstill—parked at gates, unable to fly. Inside the airport, hundreds of people stood in a line that promised nothing tangible except a conversation with a gate agent.
"I’m not on any flight. I’m trying to get a new flight. I’m in the 'agent assist line,'" said Nina Simone Warner of East Point, who had been headed to a Bible convention in Detroit until her flight was abruptly canceled.
"The link isn’t working. The Delta (Air Lines) app is down completely. Nothing is working at all," she said. "So my best hope is to stay in this line because none of the technical things are working out."
Because the cyber outage shut down commercial air travel for hours, many trying to fly had to wait instead.
"This is supposed to be a really big trip," said Haley Hoffman of Morgantown, West Virginia, who thinks she’s headed to Peru.
She flew from Pittsburgh to Atlanta.
"And then I missed my connecting flight to Lima. And now I have no idea what flight I’m booked on or where my bag is or where I will be tonight," she said.
Hoffman was with Simone in a breathtakingly long line of folks trying to talk with Delta ticket agents to rebook flights.
Another line formed for folks trying to reconnect with checked baggage that disappeared onto flights the passengers missed.
"We’re trying get our baggage and that’s a new problem," said Joseph Parker, who connected in Atlanta during travel from Hawaii home to New Orleans.
"They’re telling us our bags are on a plane heading to New Orleans. But we’re like, how's it on a plane heading to New Orleans, but we’re not on a plane heading to New Orleans?" Parker asked.