LAX Madness

This past Saturday, we went to pick up my dad at LAX. He was arriving from Taiwan on a non-stop flight to Los Angeles. My father was scheduled to arrive at 4PM. We got to the airport at around 4:30PM thinking that my dad will be done with going through customs at 5PM. When we arrived at the airport, we did notice that it was a little more crowded than usual. It was difficult finding a parking spot, and the arrival area felt like a zoo.

His plane was delayed so he did not land until 5:30PM. So we waited. Then 6PM rolled around, a Korean airline personnel walked around with a sign that said something about long delays and a computer crash. I asked the other people who were waiting and found out that the computers for security and immigration checks crashed. Some people have been waiting since noon! So we waited.

Finally a little past midnight, my dad walked out from the back after a 15 hour flight plus another 7 hours of delay. He told me that he was on the plane for 5 additional hours after landing. Crazy huh?

And what else could we have done but to wait. You would think that one of the busiest airports in the world would have back up systems of the back up systems to prevent things like this from happening. When the computers were fixed, they were shuffling people through checks as fast as they could. I wonder how many "bad" people were able to sneak past security checks due to the madness. And LAX did not communicate with the passengers or the people waiting. Most folks had no idea what was happening. It would have been nice to be informed by LAX what was happening. Is that too much to ask?

"The glitch idled 20,000 passengers and more than 60 planes, causing some to idle on the tarmac for more than five hours. At least seven other flights were diverted to nearby airports." more