The Labor Day chaos at Newark Airport after the steward unleashed a false alarm

A holiday airport presents a daunting proposition, virtually regardless of the airport and no matter the vacation. A surplus of tired passengers, probably from long weekends and unprepared to return to work mode, overloading air transport systems with the already fragile appearance grumbling to their doors. Add to that an unexplained emergency evacuation, and you'll get a recipe for unbridled chaos – and also, precisely the situation that took place at Terminal A at Newark Airport on Monday night.

Lenis Rodrigues, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Tuesday morning at Gothamist that "there is no danger for anyone at the airport. airport and that the situation is under control ". But for a few minutes, passengers and airport staff wondered whether the sudden onset of an acute pandemonium was an active shooter, a bomb threat, or whatever.

Cristina Centeno tells Gothamist that she was sitting at her door and that she was waiting for the arrival of her plane to Charlotte, North Carolina, when she heard a loud and disturbing sound as if something heavy was falling. "The next thing I know, everyone was running towards my exit from the door saying that there was a shooter," she recalls. "We all ran out on the tracks to get as far as possible from our terminal," and although the police arrived in the minute, Centeno said, "Everyone was panicked. outside who were crying … it was terrifying. "

In addition, Centeno added: "No one has actually made an announcement", leaving all the displaced passengers marinated in confusion for about fifteen minutes. Centeno believes that it took the authorities to clean up the area and bring everyone back to the inside of the airport.

According to Rodrigues, the seemingly very avoidable situation occurred around 8:30 pm, after an air hostess of Alaskan Airlines went to two men at Gate 30 and began to ask "strange" questions. "Rodrigues did not say what the motivation was, but said she was" worried "and" sounded the alarm ", calling 150 to 200 passengers for self-evacuate through a ramp located at the entrance to the gate 37.

Naturally, the experience hit the people inside Terminal A, who did not know where it all came from, and ended up on the tarmac with police sirens booming all around. # 39; them. A passenger tweeted that "absolute chaos" equals "the most terrifying few minutes of [her] life."

Mr. Rodrigues added that the two men had been identified and interrogated by the port authority police department, who had released them from any wrongdoing. They were allowed to leave, but the flight attendant's interrogation continued late into the night. Rodrigues did not know if she had been released or charged Tuesday morning, but she pointed out that the apparent false alarm should not interrupt airport operations. Before taking their flight, passengers repeated the checkout procedure after entering the terminal and, presumably, having located the baggage that they had eventually abandoned in their hurry to flee the scene.

Centeno said she "had waited about an hour to get back to safety," before taking her delayed flight, which should have departed around 9:30 pm, she said, before taking off around midnight.