Atlanta airport scare: Departing planes halted after ‘accidental discharge’ at

A ground stop was called for the airport for all departing flights, per the Federal Aviation Administration, but was soon lifted. Airport officials soon gave an “all-clear” and said the airport was resuming normal operations.

Details about the weapon or circumstances surrounding the accidental discharge have not been made available.

Witnesses recount chaos after scare

Witnesses described confusion and disarray as panic erupted in one of the world’s busiest airports.

Erika Zeidler, who was traveling from Atlanta to Anchorage, Alaska, said she was sitting in a restaurant in Concourse T when people began running down the hallway.

“We thought they were late for a flight, and then more and more people started running,” she told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “There was some screaming and then somebody stopped and said, ‘There’s a shooter, you need to go.'”

Zeidler and others took shelter in a TGI Fridays restaurant, she said. Photos she shared on Twitter showed a crowd of people standing on the tarmac beneath a jetway as the incident unfolded.

Greg Romero had just gotten off a flight from Salt Lake City when he heard there was an emergency, he told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield. Airport personnel “shut off all the escalators and cut off all passengers and turned off the tram,” said Romero, the father-in-law of CNN correspondent Nadia Romero.

“Right now airport personnel is doing a really good job keeping everybody calm,” he added.

A few travelers were “a little bit panicked but more frustrated,” Romero said. “They’re trying to catch flights, to get out of the airport. For the most part, people are just lined up against the walls.”

Dianne Callahan was traveling with her son and had just boarded her flight to New York when the crew closed the door to the plane. That’s when she said she heard screams outside the plane. She also heard sirens, Callahan said, but didn’t know what was going on.

“It was an extremely tense situation,” she said. “People were pushing to get on the plane that were not even on our flight. That’s how scared they were.”

Callahan and her son were then sent to go back through security, she said.