PHILADELPHIA – On Monday afternoon, Terminal C was still filled with a sea of luggage as people waited in a long line at the American Airlines counter.
“We checked one baggage carousel after another, but nothing came down,” said Josephine Obonyo. She and her husband had a cancelled flight in California, had traveled overnight and had to wait hours for their luggage.
“More than a day later and we are still not home,” she said.
Her nightmarish travel story is one of many she has experienced in recent days due to severe weather and thunderstorms.
“This is just the ongoing domino effect of that and now we’re seeing Hurricane Debby hit Florida, which is just making the already chaotic situation worse,” said Heather Redfern, public affairs manager for PHL. “It’s summer, flights are full and you’re trying to cram people onto flights, so it’s been a very difficult couple of days here.”
Ebony Jones says two flights to her family’s home in Fort Lauderdale were canceled and she was told the earliest they could take a flight would be Thursday.
Now they want to drive, but could not find a rental car in Philadelphia for this trip.
“They have to take an Uber for 30 minutes to Delaware and then drive back. They come back, but now we don’t have our luggage,” Jones said.
Flights from Florida to Philadelphia aren’t much better.
FOX 29’s Jason Martinez says his family’s flight was canceled in Orlando on Monday morning and the next flight with available seats won’t be available until Thursday.
He now embarks on the eight-hour drive to Atlanta to catch a flight back to Philadelphia first thing Tuesday morning.
“I have to go home. I can’t just sit here for four days. I don’t know who has that much time. And then you have to book hotels for three or four nights, and that’s not cheap,” he said. “It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”
In a statement from American Airlines on Sunday, it said, among other things, that customers whose travel plans were affected could rebook without rebooking fees.
However, with some flights empty for days, travelers are looking for other ways to get home.
Redfern says that, weather permitting, things may not return to “normal” until later this week.
“It’s really difficult and so many people have been affected in a matter of days. It’s going to take some time and some patience,” Redfern said.
