Hobbled by a storm, then deluged by a tide of flights
NEW YORK — The harsh winter storm had passed. In its aftermath, parts of the airport were overloaded, jammed with planes that had been kept on the ground during the storm. But screens showed bright yellow airplane icons — incoming flights — approaching, with many more on the way.
One by one they landed. Unused runways became parking lots, with planes waiting for gates.
And still they kept coming. Hours and hours passed.
It was the failure to stop them, experts said, that turned a chaotic but manageable winterstorm episode into an airport delay for the ages.
Yet in the complicated contraption that is Kennedy International Airport — which is managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the airlines, and the companies subcontracted by the airlines — it was not clear even on Monday, three days after the epic runway traffic jam, who was supposed to have stopped them.
It was the international terminals that were hit hardest, forcing the Port Authority to finally shut down two of them to incoming flights until their occupants could undo the messy knot outside and within.
A rolling cascade of emergencies brought about by human error and winter weather led to the nightmarish long weekend, as thousands of travelers from around the world found themselves trapped. And that was before frigid water from a burst pipe began raining from a ceiling in Terminal 4, pooling amid the luggage of the stranded.
The turmoil was a reminder of the domino effect of air travel, and that the ripples from complications at an airport that is a vital cog in the global travel network can quickly spread across the world.
The Port Authority said an investigation was underway to determine what went wrong. The truth could be weeks away, or more, as the various entities inside Kennedy — the landlord of the airport itself, the companies that move bags and direct air traffic and sell seats on airplanes — are scrutinized. For now, no one has taken full responsibility for the debacle, with the Port Authority pointing at airlines and terminal operators who have said little so far.
But interviews with experts familiar with Kennedy’s operations this weekend, as well as with scores of passengers both inside that jampacked airport and others far away, hint at the complicated story to someday come, and offer a view from within the chaotic scene.
The arrival of a severe winter storm on Thursday was not a surprise.
With a snowstorm ominously described as a bomb cyclone bearing down on the New York area, the Port Authority started warning about airport disruption and flight cancellations on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, as the snow piled up and winds strengthened, the Port Authority announced that Kennedy would temporarily shut down. At 1 p.m., it was telling travelers that it intended to resume flight activity later that day.
“Virtually no foreign airline canceled any flights into JFK” on Thursday, said Jason Rabinowitz, a freelance aviation blogger who tracked the cascading pileup as it played out. “They all launched their aircraft, but by the time they got halfway over the Atlantic, they found out they couldn’t land at JFK.”