With clear skies over North Texas, some passengers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport had no intentions of being stuck on the ground Wednesday.
"We got in from New York to Miami,” traveler Antanasia Collins said. “Then I got a message saying our flight is canceled to go to Cancun." She and her husband then had to reroute from Miami to Dallas trying to get to Cancun.
Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm Wednesday afternoon. Nearly 900 hundred flights were canceled at Florida airports.
"My flight got canceled for tonight,” traveler Martin Charles said. “So I came this morning."
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More than 2.5 million people were under mandatory evacuation orders.
"Just trying to get out you would either go over to Miami or you would go north,” Naples, Florida resident Michael Laplaca said. “The traffic that we did see was just horrendous when people did finally decide to evacuate."
He said going through this is mentally exhausting.
"You're constantly glued to the television and you're waiting for the next update to come,” Laplaca said. “It’s like you are anticipating the worst to happen and that is just draining on you."
For those who did leave and got a flight, they feel lucky.
"I was anticipating delays because, you know, the way the storm is moving across the state,” Charles said. “Coming to Dallas you got to go towards the west. So, I got up early this morning to make sure it wasn't canceled."
Now the question is how bad will the damage be when he returns.
