Flights resumed at Reagan National, but the day hardly felt normal

Reagan National Airport in Washington, typically jammed early weekday mornings, was uncannily quiet before sunrise Thursday. Police cars blocked the entrances, allowing in workers, reporters and law enforcement, and turned away the usual crowds.

Inside the airport, the ticket counters were quiet, and the baggage carousels still, though the convenience stores and cafes remained open, incongruously, offering magazines, gum and hand sanitizer to an empty airport. Here and there on the rows of chairs, a stranded passenger dozed, covered in a coat.

Outside, emergency operations could be seen only at a distance and appeared to be a small fraction of the frenzied response to the crash Wednesday night. A small cluster of flashing lights from emergency vehicles could be seen on the banks closest to the site of the crash, and only one helicopter circled overhead.

As the morning unfolded, the airport slowly returned to something approaching normal, with the familiar noise of roller bags sounding through the terminal and lines forming once again at the ticket counters.

Fights were scheduled to resume around 11 am, and while there were still plenty of cancellations on the departures board, planes had begun taxiing outside on the tarmac. And then a few started taking off.

Joseph and Ivy Craig considered themselves among the lucky ones -- "timing-wise," Craig quickly added, to make clear there were more profound things to feel fortune about than making a flight in time. They were heading to Florida to see Craig's father, and so far, it seemed to be unfolding as planned. "We're right on that line," said Craig, 29, pointing out that a number of flights departing just before theirs had been canceled.

The Craigs had been unsure how this day would go since late Wednesday night, when Craig's father texted him about the crash.

While speculation ran rampant for several hours -- "including from the president," Craig muttered -- the grim facts were clear soon enough. And their worries about whether they would make their own flight came into a perspective: "That's kind of selfish," Craig said. "Let's reserve our feelings for the people whose family members were on the flight."

Even if their trip to Florida were disrupted, there were worse things. They would get there, just maybe later than planned.

Outside the airport, things were not quite normal either.

US Park Police had closed off all of the parks and marinas that border the waters south of Washington for several miles surrounding the site of the crash, preventing observers from getting close.

Gravelly Point, just a few hundred feet from the north end of the runway at Reagan National, was one of the closed parks. It has for decades been a spot favored by aviation enthusiasts as well as tourists and picnickers who want to watch flights land and take off.

In Southwest D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department had closed off at least half a dozen streets on the banks of the Anacostia River, roughly 2 miles from the crash site.

Tom Lynch, a police spokesperson, said that human remains that were recovered were being taken to a mobile morgue.

At the airport, some of the passengers in the terminal expressed sadness about what had happened overnight, but few said they had any anxiety about flying. They had places to go.

"We were nervous," said Verdell Williams, 73, who had come from Norfolk, Virginia, that morning, nearly 200 miles away, unsure of whether her flight was even going to leave. Her daughter-in-law had called her at 4 a.m. with the news of the crash and the possibility that they might miss their long-planned family cruise.

But Williams prayed, and decided to hit the road anyway. And a little after noon, she was rolling her suitcase through the airport terminal on her way to catch her flight. She was thankful that the trip was going forward. "A lot of money was spent," she said.