Jessica Shawcroft
The Paw Print
By now I’m sure we’ve all heard about the shooting that happened at Los Angeles International Airport on November 1, 2013 around 9:30 am. The accounts are everywhere, massive panic spread throughout the terminal and millions of people were left stranded. The airport stopped allowing planes to land and sent people on to Sky Harbor in Phoenix, Arizona, and Ontario in California.
The airport was shut down for a few hours with planes and people in utter confusion. I was on board a Frontier plan, landing at Los Angeles International Airport, just moments before the shooting.
My husband and I booked the early flight to California so we’d have the whole day to spend with family, rather than losing it to travel time. We left Denver at 8:30 am and began our descent into Los Angeles around 9:15.
We landed at 9:20 and made our way to terminal three but were stopped short because of an incident. The pilot said it would only take a few minutes then we’d be back on our way to the terminal. Twenty minutes later he had to move the plane and we sat for eight hours on the tarmac.
When we were first alerted of the incident my husband thought nothing of it, I began to search the news site and the Los Angeles Airport site for information on what the incident was. It wasn’t until ten minutes later the news had updated that a shooting was happening at the airport.
At that moment we were all grateful to be on the plane and not at our terminal. Frontier flight attendants were extremely rude about the situation and gave everyone two cups of water and a granola bar because “by law we have to give you a granola bar since we’ve been on the plane for five hours.”
The wait was excruciating, we believed we were forgotten about. We were told we were waiting for clearance, then for stairs, and then security. After the eight hours of waiting, a staircase was brought over to us, one that had been sitting there the entire time.
Passengers were extremely frustrated and some even began yelling at the flight attendants. The attendants ended up disappearing for a good 90% of the eight hours, which made for even angrier passengers. The lack of information given to us and the long wait with no food or drink was ridiculous.
When we finally exited the aircraft we were shuttled to the baggage claim, to find that the airline had “misplaced” our luggage. My husband and I decided to leave rather than wait around further. We began walking down the onramp to the airport with hundreds of other people. Every turn we made, more people were waiting, some even asleep on the sidewalks and roads. We walked four miles to find a road that was open so my family could come pick us up; four miles on no food and hardly any water.
Helicopters circled all around, news crews were everywhere, and people were wandering around with no direction. It seems to me that the airport and police from the area were clearly lost as well. No plan had been made on how to exit all these passengers out of the airline, how to keep people safe, or how to provide quality service. Roads upon roads were shut down, leaving people to walk, which clogged more roadways. Airlines were sent to other airports, stranding more people and causing jams in other airports and cities as well. There was a major lack of information to the crews from the airport itself so no one had any idea what was really going on.
After the first ever shooting of a TSA agent, you’d think the airport would change things, maybe supply their workers with guns, have metal detectors as you enter the airport or even beef up security. None of which we witnessed. We flew back on November 8th, same terminal as previously. We checked in, walked over to security and went through the same process as previously done. No attempt to avoid issues, like what happened on the 1st had been made, or at least was observed.
It’s unfortunate that a man lost his life and several others were injured. I’d hope eventually this becomes a learning experience for the airports and airlines.
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