Bomb Scare Causes Long Closure of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, Mass Confusion for Passengers

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A bomb threat Saturday temporarily halted flights at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, caused panic among passengers and triggered the evacuation of two terminals before operations returned to normal.

No explosive devices were reported found by a Broward Sheriff’s Office bomb squad, which was summoned after the threat was reported around 8:49 a.m.

Shortly after midday, they gave the all-clear and passengers were readmitted to Terminals 2 and 3, which had been both emptied of airline customers and employees.

“As a precaution, deputies have evacuated Terminals 2 & 3 and have also shutdown entry into the airport. BSO’s bomb squad is investigating. Persons headed to the airport are asked to avoid the area,” according to an 11:46 a.m. post.

Less than an hour later, deputies gave the all-clear. Delta Air Lines, the predominant carrier at Terminal 2, started readmitting customers, a spokeswoman at the company’s Atlanta headquarters said.

The sheriff’s office offered no immediate information about who raised the alarm or if a suspicious object contributed to the emergency.

Passengers spent the morning wondering what happened, and after the all-clear was given, some criticized the absence of information. One recounted mixed signals from authorities.

“This just really scared people,” said Marcia Assis, 57, a newlywed who was traveling home to Toronto after marrying her husband in Key West.

As the couple awaited their American Airlines flight to Chicago in Terminal 3, she said, a public address announcement informed customers not to exit the building. Then another told them to leave.

“There was a lot of confusion and nobody knew what to do,” Assis said. “I was scared because they didn’t tell us what happened. I thought it was a fire and I thought it is not safe here if everyone has to evacuate and they can’t explain what happened.”

“I was thinking I wanted to live here and start my new life with my husband,” she added. “But not now.”

Another passenger, Taja Accime, 32, was headed to the airport in an Uber for a 1 p.m. flight. Around 10:30, her ride got stuck in snagged traffic around Griffin Road.

“No one was able to move,” said Accime, who missed her flight to visit family members in the Bahamas. She started checking social media, traffic reports and the sheriff’s office website for information.

“The information from FLL airport was really bad,” she said. The Uber dropped her off at a nearby Chipotle and soon after that, the airport gave the all clear.

“If we had known things were clearing up even 15 minutes before that, if they had tweeted that everything was open as soon as it happened at 11, we would have made our flight,” she said.

With the crisis past, airlines reported flight delays that caused long lines of passengers in the affected terminals.

Delta displayed on overhead screens the delays of eight departures and five arrivals.

United Airlines, which operates out of Terminal 1, said three flights were delayed. But they departed the airport later in the afternoon, said spokeswoman Maddie King in an email. She said the carrier did not anticipate any other issues.

Initial posts on the airport’s official social media pages cited a “security investigation” while passengers posted messages stating they had been told about a bomb threat.

At around 11:30 a.m., the airport posted an update stating that the lower-level roadway was open and that access to Terminals 1 and 4, plus the rental-car center, was not impacted. However, a few minutes later, the airport posted another message stating that law enforcement had closed the lower-level roadway again.

Terminal 2 hosts Delta and Air Canada. Terminal 3 includes American, Azul, JetBlue, Sun Country and Sunwing, according to the airport website.

Another passenger posted a message saying passengers had been moved into the Terminal 3 parking garage.

It was not immediately clear whether anyone has been injured.

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