Family Forced To Sleep Outside Closed Hawai'i Airport After Flight Cancelation

Sometimes, for whatever reason, you get stuck in the airport overnight. It sucks, but whether it’s a long layover, weather delays or just a canceled flight, it does happen. You’re probably not going to be comfortable, but at least you’re inside, relatively warm and have access to food, water and bathrooms. According to SFGATE, though, one family trying to get home from Hawai’i found themselves forced to spend the night outside the airport after their flight was canceled.

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The saga began the night of February 17 at Hawai’i’s Kona International Airport. Timmie John and five other family members were headed back to Idaho and were waiting on their connecting flight to California when they learned their flight was delayed. At about 11 p.m., United Airlines told them their flight had been canceled.

Unfortunately for John, her four kids and her grandmother, United informed them that the airport was closing for the night for maintainence, and they would need to leave the terminal with their bags. Normally, the airport wouldn’t close overnight, but on that particular night, it did to allow repair crews to work. When John asked the gate agent about a hotel voucher, she was reportedly told that while the airline had one for them, all of the hotel rooms within 50 miles were full.

“I asked the United agent where are we supposed to go and sleep if the airport is closing?” John told SFGATE. “She said ‘Sometimes I see people sleeping over there’ and pointed to benches on the grass outside. I have four kids and my grandmother was there. She just didn’t care. We were just outside on the grass.”

In addition to the discomfort of sleeping on the ground outside, they also reportedly had cockroaches and construction noise to deal with all night. And they weren’t the only ones. John claimed she saw at least a dozen other people forced to sleep outside the airport, as well.

“We were all just trying to survive the night,” John told SFGATE. “I was smashing cockroaches. There were construction trucks going by all night and then the sprinklers came on while everyone was resting. I was so shocked, there was no offering of blankets or food. And no way to get out.”

A spokesperson for the Hawai’i Department of Transportation, which operates the airport, told SFGATE in an email, “We sincerely apologize for the impact to travelers. Passengers are allowed to stay in the terminal but on the nights referenced, we were unable to allow passengers back into the secure areas of the terminal once they departed because the security checkpoint was closed.”

And according to a United spokesperson, the flight was “delayed overnight because of a last-minute crew scheduling issue. We provided compensation for the delay, in addition to sending a link to all customers for accommodation reimbursement due to a lack of available hotel rooms in the Kona area.”

The good news is, John and her family made it through the night and were allowed back inside the airport when it eventually reopened and were able to head home later that morning. According to her, United only offered her $200 for their troubles.

“It was unbelievable,” she told SFGATE. “They should have had better communication on how to take care of passengers and travelers.”

Apparently, this is far from the only time that passengers have been forced to sleep outside the Kona airport. John told SFGATE that when she posted about her experience in a Hawai’ian travel group on Facebook, others shared similar stories of being forced to sleep outside the airport.