Hundreds of Delta flights canceled Saturday, long lines and crowds fill Atlanta airport
Published in News & Features
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines canceled more than 370 flights Saturday, and long lines of travelers waiting to go through security stretched through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s domestic terminal and baggage claim areas.
The disruptions were the fallout of Delta’s struggles during a Friday winter storm at its Atlanta hub that continued into a second day, and TSA warns that Sunday may be congested as well.
Travelers in line around noon Saturday told the AJC they had waited more than three hours for the main security checkpoint and many missed their flights in the process. Confusion reigned as the security lines snaking through the terminal mixed with lines of those waiting to check bags.
“I already did” miss my flight, while waiting in line for hours at the Atlanta airport, said Cynthia Marques, who was trying to fly home to Denver. She was able to get booked on another for the afternoon.
In some areas of Terminal South, where Delta has its check-in counters, lines extended outside the doors Saturday morning.
The long lines at the domestic terminal were in part because some security checkpoints remained closed Saturday morning, including the Terminal North checkpoint. One north checkpoint did ultimately open Saturday afternoon, according to the airport’s website.
Roughly a third of workers scheduled to staff security checkpoints Saturday morning didn’t come to work, according to Transportation Security Administration spokesman Mark Howell.
After several inches of snow and ice blanketed the metro area on Friday, government officials had been warning people to stay off the roads. MARTA bus service had been suspended Friday and only began phasing in limited routes on Saturday afternoon.
Delta warned travelers to get to Hartsfield-Jackson three hours before their flights for “longer-than-usual security wait times,” but some in line Saturday told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they only received those notices after they had been waiting for hours.
Even wait times for members of the TSA PreCheck trusted traveler program at the domestic terminal — and security lines at the international terminal — reached an hour long or more Saturday around midday.
Compounding the chaos has been unreliable data service and Wi-Fi in both domestic and international terminals, apparently overloaded by the crowds.
Long lines and heavy congestion are also expected Sunday at Hartsfield-Jackson, according to TSA.
The flight cancellations and lengthy wait times mean a second day of travelers being unable to get to their destinations or return home after trips, with some sleeping at the airport.
The Friday storm disruptions were worsened by an aborted takeoff of a Delta plane with passengers evacuating via emergency slides onto a snowy runway Friday morning.
The runway was temporarily closed after the evacuation, while other runways amid the snowstorm were not yet cleared and deiced for use. As a result, there were no usable runways and no takeoffs and landings at the world’s busiest airport for more than two hours on Friday.
Some flights had to be diverted during the shutdown of flights at Hartsfield-Jackson. Delta said “several bands of sleet and freezing rain throughout the day and early into the evening also prompted diversions and a temporary pause in aircraft deicing, further challenging our recovery.”
While Delta had canceled fewer than 200 flights including Delta Connection flights for Friday in advance of the storm, that grew into more than 1,160 flight cancellations by the end of the day, according to FlightAware.com.
Including other airlines’ flight cancellations, there were more than 1,500 flights canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson on Friday, including more than 120 Southwest Airlines cancellations, the FlightAware data show. Southwest is the second-largest carrier at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Delta said its employees were “working to recover the airline heading into Saturday.”
On Saturday at Hartsfield-Jackson, the Delta cancellations across its route network include more than 270 cancellations of departures or arrivals, amounting to more than 20% of its flight schedule in Atlanta, according to FlightAware.
Some morning flights were canceled because flight crews and planes were out of place after the storm flight cancellations. Delta said it expects its operations to recover Saturday “as weather conditions improve.”
Frontier, Spirit, American and Southwest also canceled a portion of their flights in Atlanta for Saturday.
While many people were trapped in security lines and missed their flights, the scene inside the concourses on Saturday afternoon was calm in comparison. While there were some lines to speak to Delta agents, the congestion appeared to remain on the other side of security around 1:30 p.m.
In a social media post Saturday morning Hartsfield-Jackson warned travelers to “be prepared for possible delays” as operations “ramp up” after Friday’s weather.
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©2025 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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