Videos taken outside the St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Sunday shows travelers waiting in lines extending to the highway.
“I was seeing that it was about five hours to drop a bag, and unfortunately, I was checking a bag,” Jessicah Cross, a first-time traveler to St. Louis, tells PEOPLE.
Cross was in town on July 13 for a conference when her sister-in-law, who had a layover at the airport, texted her about the “excessive” lines. So, she left her conference an hour and a half early to beat the crowds.
After Cross took a shuttle to the airport, she had noticed the line had died down from what she had seen on social media. Though, it was still long. In a video she posted to TikTok, passengers are still waiting in lines extending out the entrance.
“From the time I was dropped off to the time I made it to the counter to drop my bag, it was about an hour and 10 minutes,” Cross says.
When Cross arrived, she began to realize many of the passengers were coming from the same place.
“Much of this was due to the large number of delegates going home from the Seventh-day Adventists’ General Conference,” a spokesperson for St. Louis Lambert shared in a statement with PEOPLE.“We understand many of the delegates arrived at the airport early for flights scheduled later in the day.”
Through comments on her TikTok, Cross learned this was the first time the conference had welcomed international visitors. Adding to the mess, the conference bussed all attendees to the airport at the same time, regardless of their flight departures.
“Everybody was just in a state of shock,” Cross explains. “Everybody was just trying to laugh it off, because what can you do in that situation?”
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Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, the airport’s director, says it didn’t help that many of the flyers did not have TSA Pre-Check.
“Everyone was here for two weeks so most all of them had at least two bags to check,” she tells local outlet KMOV. “So between not having access through CLEAR or Pre-Check, having the bags and everyone coming out in the morning for flights throughout the day it really was hard for both the airlines and TSA.”
Despite the hiccups, Cross says everyone she encountered was still friendly.
“Everybody in line with me was in great spirits. Everybody in the airport was so incredibly nice,” she tells PEOPLE. “Everybody was shockingly, very nice in the airport yesterday, which is, you know, something you don’t typically encounter.”
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