PHOENIX – The man who panicked Sunday at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after giving up a rental car near Terminal 4 – leading to a nearly four-hour shutdown, about 300 flight delays and dozens of flight cancellations a traffic quote.

Portions of Terminal 4 were closed for hours while the police investigated the car left unattended at the edge of the street. A few hours after the initial evacuation, investigators determined that the rental car was not a threat.

But Janet Cappo and her husband, Gerald, did not know it when they arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor around 7:15 am local time – three hours before the scheduled departure of the American Airlines flight to Detroit.

They noticed dozens of police cars crammed into Terminal 4 as they passed the way to the rental car.

"We knew something big was going to happen, but we had no idea what it could be," she said.

TO CLOSE

Phoenix Sky Harbor travelers have problems after Terminal 4 closes
Patrick Breen, Republic of Arizona

When the couple boarded the shuttle to the airport, her driver was asked not to approach Terminal 4 and drop it off at Terminal 3.

They thought that they were just going to take the PHX SkyTrain to their current terminal. They quickly discovered that the train did not move and did not let passengers get on board.

The couple waited patiently for the next train.

They did not know yet that they would spend the next few hours stuck in the same little room with hundreds of others without any information on what was going on. out at the airport and why they were not allowed to leave.

This was not a simple towing call

A Nissan said the silver four-door Nissan was idling on the upper edge of Terminal 4's upper deck for at least 25 minutes.

The car, a silver Nissan, abandoned in front of Phoenix Sky Harbor Terminal 4 before being towed after a police investigation on September 16, 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Richard Polanco, Jr.)

For nearly ten years, the owner of the Towing Alliance, Richard Polanco Jr., was responsible for towing the cars left at the airport while his relatives rushed to the airport at the airport. search for travelers.

Polanco felt that this towing job would be the same as all the others.

This changed when he arrived at the airport only to be fired after the police told him that they had found a trace of something on the car. Polanco said The Republic of Arizona he was not sure what the police had discovered exactly.

Polanco said the officers told him to wait out of the call to tow the vehicle.

The Phoenix bomb team and a defusing robot spent the next four hours determining whether the car had remained harmless or had been filled with explosives and intentionally planted at the terminal. one of the busiest airports in the nation.

Hundreds of people wait in Sky Harbor, delays at the national level

Soon, hundreds of travelers filled the Terminal 3 SkyTrain platform.

At other airports across the country, passengers traveling to Phoenix were delayed for several hours as police searched the abandoned car thousands of kilometers away.

In a few hours, some passengers waited calmly. Some slept on the floor. Others took Twitter to express their frustrations and speculate on the cause of the terminal closure.

On Twitter, a woman said she was missing a friend 's bridal shower due to a canceled flight.

The Twitter user @ryanhintze called the driver of the abandoned vehicle "selfish".

Hintze wrote in a direct message that as early as 3:17 he was still sitting in his plane at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. He was traveling to Tampa, but had a stopover in Phoenix.

"An inconsiderate person has decided to waste time on thousands of people and disturb them," Hintze wrote in a direct message. "I hope that the idiot who has left the rental car is hunted down and punished to the fullest extent of the law."

Dian Squire and countless other travelers were sitting on the ground with their bags wrapped while waiting for information from the Transportation Security Administration or airport staff.

Squire turned to Twitter looking for any updates after his flight from American Airlines to Detroit was delayed several times.

Airport volunteers brought therapy dogs to help calm the growing crowd as staff distributed bottles of water.

Passengers speculated that they could spot planes taking off or landing from their distant view of the runway. Others thought they had heard loud noises coming from the terminal while they were checking the status of their own flight on their phones.

"People are surprisingly calm," Squire said in a message to The Republic from inside the terminal. "I think a security threat is more manageable in people's minds than a delay on the plane for other reasons, and I bet it's different for people stuck in the terminal itself. "

At around 10 am, an airline employee climbed onto one of the chairs and shouted to the crowd that all the flights had stopped, but they would start again soon.

Traveler Janet Cappo said that he did not share any additional information.

More and more people were entering the Sky Train station. They did not know that something was wrong.

Then, without fanfare, the trains suddenly began to circulate around 11:15.

"A silly mistake"

It was five hours before Polanco got the green light from the police to tow the damaged car after the investigators determined that it was not a threat.

The windows of the silver Nissan were broken and shards of glass were scattered across the street along Terminal 4. The front hood and trunk were torn while the bomb team was looking for explosives in the car.

Polanco noticed that the driver of the car was still talking to the police while he was attaching the car to his tow truck. He offered to give the driver a ride to his towing lot.

The man chatted on his cell phone while he was sitting in the passenger seat of Polanco's truck. Polanco could hear him tell his family and his girlfriend that he had been detained and interrogated by the police for hours.

Polanco said the driver thought only a few minutes had passed after he ran into the terminal to help his girlfriend check his flight. He did not know that his rental car was already torn by the squad on his return.

Polanco and the man chatted for a few minutes after hanging up the phone.

"He was just disappointed that something as small – a stupid mistake as he made – has become a big problem," said Polanco.

He never thought to ask for the name of the man.

Consequences for the driver?

Phoenix Police Sgt Tommy Thompson said the man would probably have no repercussions other than the parking quote. He refused to divulge the name of the man because the police department does not publicly identify people who are not detained.

Thompson said that he had been informed that the ticket would probably be about 56 dollars. It was not obvious that the driver will have to pay the damage to the vehicle or towing costs.

Generally, a quote for leaving an unattended vehicle in a parking area is accompanied by an estimated $ 134 fine in Phoenix, according to the Phoenix City website.

On the other hand, according to the Department of Public Safety, this is a minimum fine of $ 400 for driving in a non-passenger HOV lane.

"All this was a mess"

Squire, who was traveling to Detroit, said his flight was delayed at 4:15 pm. after the reopening of the airport.

Others, such as Florida resident Chris Gaastra, were forced to reschedule important doctor appointments and other personal, professional or family occasions.

Gaastra and her boyfriend spent the night in a Phoenix hotel after missing their return flight. Another flight was not available until Monday. It would have cost them thousands of dollars to book a previous flight with another airline.

"I can not do anything about it and I'm glad it's not a bomb," she said. "Sad person was so stupid."

Janet Cappo completely missed her flight to Detroit. Her husband, who was to travel separately to Los Angeles, was also stuck after the cancellation of her flight. There were no open flights scheduled for the rest of the day.

The couple decided that it was not worth the wait after seeing the mess of thousands of people stranded.

They rented a car with the intention of making the six-hour drive to Los Angeles. From there, Janet plans to go home tomorrow night to see her grandchildren.

"All this was only a total mess," she added.

Reporters from Arizona Republic, Lita Beck, Phillips Ali, Angel Mendoza and Chris McCrory contributed to this report.

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