This past weekend saw New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport descend into multiple layers of chaos.

It all started when a ‘bomb cyclone’ hit the Northeast region of America at the end of last week, leaving behind mass amounts of snow as far as the eye could see.

But while all airports in the region had the same delays to deal with, JFK found themselves with a lot more on their hands, reports AU.News.

You see, once the storm had passed, parts of the airport became “jammed with planes that had been kept on the ground during the storm,” reports NY Times. And before they could be cleared, more flights just kept coming in, causing unused runways to became parking lots:

It was the failure to stop them, experts said, that turned a chaotic but manageable winter-storm episode into an airport delay for the ages.

The delays spanned four days, leaving thousands of travellers stranded, both national and international, and forcing many to spend the time in the airport:

Frozen equipment, luggage-handling problems and staff shortages slowed down operations on the ground. As flights got backlogged, gates clogged up, and some arriving passengers waited on the tarmac for hours and ended up being bussed to terminals. Other flights were diverted. One plane even clipped another outside a terminal amid the difficult conditions.

And most of the chaos was captured on camera:

Then, many travellers were left with a lingering headache of being reunited with their luggage:

At points, scores of suitcases were lined up in cordoned-off areas without their owners. [T]he Port Authority had told airlines and the companies that run terminals to get bags and passengers back together fast.

To top things off, amidst all the chaos a water pipe broke and “about eight centimetres of water gushed onto the floor of Terminal 4, suspending its international flight arrivals for a few hours”:

Hallmark Aviation Services employee Jonathan Chiu caught some of the flooding in a video that shows a ceiling collapsing over his co-worker’s desk, WNBC reported. Both Chiu and his co-worker were at a safe distance from his desk when the ceiling fell.

The video was posted to YouTube by Chiu’s co-worker:

Chaos.

All in all, experts have blamed the airport itself for the poor planning.

Everyone knew the storm would hit on Thursday, yet the airport did little to divert any incoming flights. This, as well as the multitude of problems faced over the course of the weekend, has left many travellers frustrated:

Inside Terminal 4, a line of hungry men, women and children like something from a Depression-era newsreel formed outside a Dunkin’ Donuts stand.

“There were queues and queues of people going nowhere,” said Mike Bedigan, 22, of Britain. “People didn’t know what it was they were queuing for.”

Outside was no different, as arriving flights were forced to sit idle on the runways. “We were, like, in a weird little no-go zone,” said Ms. Bismuth, after her Norwegian flight from France eventually arrived in New York after having made a U-turn back to Paris. “The crew was exhausted. We were exhausted.”

Another passenger, Eliott Ozeel, 25, landed at Kennedy from France at 10:30 p.m. on Friday. He fell asleep while his plane sat on the tarmac, only to wake with the dawn more than six hours later, still there.

Not fun.

[source:businessinsider&aunews]