They always say bring extra snacks just in case when you travel — and for passengers stuck on two Delta flights last week, that advice would have made a very long night just a little more bearable.
Imagine this: you’re headed home from Mexico. You’re supposed to connect through Atlanta. But instead, your plane — and another one — get diverted to Montgomery, Alabama. You land at an airport that doesn’t even have customs — meaning legally, you’re not allowed to get off the plane.
That’s exactly what happened to passengers aboard Delta Flights 1828 from Cabo San Lucas and 599 from Mexico City on Wednesday night.
“We ended up in Montgomery, which is not an international airport,” passenger Lauren Forbes told WVCB in a video call from the terminal. “I guess the law is that if there’s no customs at the airport, you are literally stuck on that airplane. So, I just learned that today.”
Delta confirmed that both planes were bound for Atlanta when crews were forced to divert due to severe weather. Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport wasn’t an option either because of storms. One of the pilots even told passengers they were originally aiming for Birmingham but had to make a quick decision:
“He was really trying to make it to Birmingham, but we were going to run out of gas,” Forbes said.
Here’s how the night unfolded. Flight 1828 (150 passengers) departed Cabo San Lucas at 5:17 p.m. It landed in Montgomery and reached a gate at 10:34 p.m. Passengers weren’t allowed to leave the plane until 5:23 a.m. the next day.
Flight 599 (147 passengers) left Mexico City at 6:16 p.m. It reached a gate in Montgomery at 10:22 p.m. Those passengers were held onboard until 5:15 a.m.
While they sat trapped for hours overnight, there wasn’t much comfort onboard. Forbes said the crew could only distribute water and cookies.
“So everyone’s very ravenous still, and they just kept changing [the plan],” she explained.
At times, passengers tried to sleep, but it wasn’t peaceful.
“People would sleep, but then you were woken up by the announcements. And there was a point where people just said, you know, don’t make the announcement if it’s going to be a lie,” Forbes said.
When passengers were finally allowed to disembark, they didn’t even use a jet bridge. The planes were too large. Instead, everyone had to walk down a stairway onto the freezing, dark tarmac, huddling together with hundreds of others in the cold.
“It was freezing, and it was dark, and there were hundreds of us just standing there,” Forbes recalled.
Inside the terminal, the experience didn’t get much better. Passengers were confined to a small area — and even the bathrooms were guarded by police.
“There were police even guarding the bathrooms,” Forbes said.
To make matters worse, while Delta booked them flights from Montgomery to Atlanta, Forbes said her boyfriend had to call customer service himself to book their final leg back to Boston.
“We shouldn’t have to be responsible for that,” she said.
Delta issued an apology afterward:
“We sincerely apologize to our customers for this experience. We fell short of how we aspire to serve and care for our customers amid thunderstorms in the Southeast U.S. Thursday evening. We are reaching out to each customer with a full refund of their booking,” a Delta spokesperson said.
It’s a travel nightmare few could imagine — stranded for hours, running low on patience (and cookies), freezing on the tarmac, and guarded inside the terminal — all while just trying to get home.
Moral of the story? Bring snacks. Maybe bring a blanket too. And if you’re traveling internationally, hope your pilot doesn’t have to make an unexpected stop where customs isn’t even an option.
