ATL Weather Ground Stop 5-26-15
 

A weather system in ATL has caused a ground stop. Things are starting to move again but not without diverting my ORD-ATL flight to CLT. We've been on the tarmac for two hours and still waiting for clearance into ATL.

Bad day for flying in the eastern half of the US. DTW went under a ground stop as well for an hour or two, now lifted.

Even worse in that part of the country that DL has largely capitulated to AA and SW.

Was there during the ground stop on for ATL-BOS... luckily my inbound flight to ATL made it just before the storms. Was wondering if they started diverting.

We only took a 1hr delay at the gate though... was expecting much worse.
Apparently they had eastbound departures shut down for over an hour.

How bad was this in ATL? I landed in ATL 90 minutes late because of the outbound flight being stuck in ATL. At 11:30 PM last night just in one terminal the lines for rebooking were insanely long. Did that many people miss connections/cancelled flights/etc?

Co-worker of mine was supposed to fly MSP-ATL-JAN and got hung up during the ground stop.

Ended up making it to JAN about 8 hours late. Multiple guys I talked to said ATL was a disaster yesterday afternoon.

Thought this was neat to see...the lengths the pilots go to get around weather.

Another

Edit: Just talked with my buddy... He was actually scheduled MSP-ATL-JAN yesterday. They diverted to MEM where he sat on the apron for 3 hours. Couldn't pull up to a gate, couldn't open a door, couldn't get off the plane. It was especially frustrating since his destination was a 3-hour drive from MEM.

Link

Another Diversion

Was part of the ATL mess yesterday. Flying NRT ATL, we were diverted to CLT as ATL was closed and we needed to refuel after flying waiting for an opening into ATL. Originally we were told that we could deplane in CLT if we wanted but I never saw anyone get off when the door was open while we were refueling. We sat at CLT for 3 hours.

As we landed in CLT at 4 pm I called DL and was protected on a flight CLT CVG BOS leaving CLT at 5:55 but that window came and went as we sat on the tarmac so I called again as it was clear we were all headed back to ATL and we got in at 8 pm. With a second call, DL put me on the 9:40 ATL BOS. That fight eventually left at 1:40 am and got into BOS at 3:45 am.

The line in the club near A17 for rebooking was constantly 10-20 people long for hours. They kept the club open well past midnight when I left it. The lines in the terminal were at least 100 people long.

Word was that 30 DL flights had been diverted to CLT, Knoxville, Jacksonville, Raleigh, Nashville. The guy next to me on the ATL BOS leg actually was had his TPA ATL diverted to JAX after he had jumped on an earlier flight and his original flight TPA ATL BOS somehow made it to BOS on time while he sat and waited in JAX and ATL.

I will say that I was amazed at the lack of vitriol. I thought I would see people losing it, both workers and passengers. While nobody was happy, most people were coping as best as possible.

Delta pilot orders pizza for angry passengers
 

Arriving international flights can't allow passengers to deplane and leave a holding pen without being processed through immigration and customs (unless the flight did pre clearance at the origin). So I'm surprised that passengers would be told that they could deplane.

Yet we were told we could deplane in an announcement by the captain since CLT had open immigration and customs services. FA's were going through the aisles asking who wanted to get off. Again, eventually no one got off the aircraft. Whether that was the captain's choice or someone on the ground in CLT, I do not know. Originally, the captain announced we might divert into Knoxville but were told they did not have functioing customs/immigration.

All we got was a f'in cookie. Maybe we should have rioted instead.

Good week to WFH for me :X

That's wonderful but amazingly, it took a British paper to report on it. Love this story.

same here, great thing to do. However, the first post on how delta should provide healthier choices isn't far off, and that this is actually cheaper then passing out food vouchers, but considering this was due to a WX delay, Delta did a great job taking care of the passengers. Others would only be happy with a delivery of sushi or Japanese food.

However, if someone deplanes and goes through customs and immigration, I don't think they can then be permitted to reboard if doing so means mixing in with passengers who have not been processed by CBP. So AFAIK either the entire flight would need to do CBP or no one who deplaned could be permitted to reboard.