Flights resume – as do long lines – after blizzard

NEW YORK (AP) — When Angela Madsen was pulled off her plane and her wheelchair stayed on board, she knew she was in for a rough night. The paraplegic athlete struggled to get into the bathrooms at Kennedy Airport. Turning the wheels on her borrowed wheelchair strained her shoulders. Sleeping was impossible.

"I actually got out of it and laid on the floor," Madsen said.

It was, she said, a miserable time - one that was shared by millions of people on Monday, in travails big and small, serious and surreal, after the blizzard of December 2010 sucker-punched the northeastern U.S. during one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Air travel in the nation's busiest airspace nearly shut down, and thousands of stranded passengers turned terminals into open-air hotels while they waited for planes to take off and land on plowed runways. Flights slowly resumed, although experts said it would likely take several days to rebook all the displaced passengers.

Adriana Siqueira, 38, was rapidly running of money with no end in sight to her travel nightmare at New York's LaGuardia. The housekeeper from Ft. Lauderdale has been told she and her 10-year-old daughter cannot get home until New Year's Day. They have already spent one night in the terminal and can't afford a hotel.

"I have no idea what I'm going to do," Siqueira said. "I don't feel good."