Caribbean flights resume, but some Atlantans still stranded after airspace shutdown
By Kaitlyn Ross
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ATLANTA (WXIA) — Flights are moving again at Atlanta’s airport tonight, with planes arriving and departing for destinations across the Caribbean.
But for some Atlantans who were already overseas when Caribbean airspace suddenly closed, the journey home is still far from over.
Lizz Kuhn and Alex Hait were vacationing in St. Maarten when a middle-of-the-night alert changed their plans.
“It was a Delta alert that everything was canceled,” Kuhn said. “So I woke him up and said, we have problems, but we didn’t know it was Venezuela.”
The couple says they scrambled to figure out how to get their family home, opening laptops and searching for the next available flight.
“We took the soonest available,” Hait said. “So at 5 in the morning Saturday, the soonest was Wednesday. For us, that’s not a big deal, but for others, this is a huge deal.”
While Kuhn and Hait say their airline honored the cost of their ticket, the unexpected delays are adding up in other ways. Extra nights in hotels, extended rental cars, and daily expenses have become an unplanned financial burden.
“We’re still paying for food, we are still paying for the room, I extended our rental car,” Kuhn said. “These are all costs we weren’t expecting to have to do.”
They say they’ve also seen other families struggle to find lodging as hotels fill up with travelers unable to leave.
“They have to check in every morning,” Hait said. “They think they’ll get out Tuesday, they have to check in every morning to see if they can keep their room, because the people from the states are coming in and they don’t know where they’re going to go, and they’re a family of five.”
Airlines said they are working to clear the backlog. In a statement, Delta Air Lines says its teams across the global network continue to focus on supporting customers following the federal government’s shutdown and recent reopening of Caribbean airspace.
Delta said it has added more than 2,600 seats through extra flights across its Caribbean network for Monday, Jan. 5, and expects all affected customers to be reaccommodated by Tuesday, Jan. 6. The airline warns some delays could still occur due to increased capacity, but says teams are coordinating to support customers with tight connections.
Delta recommends customers with confirmed or rebooked tickets for Monday arrive at least three hours early because of heavier traffic. Travelers without confirmed tickets are urged not to come to the airport until they have been rebooked.
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport tonight, there are no additional flight cancellations reported. Travelers here say they’re grateful flights are moving again — even if some still don’t know exactly when they’ll land back home.
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