All they wanted was to go home.

        They dribbled into Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport by the tens and then hundreds Thursday, homesick travelers stranded in this Delta Air Lines hub city since Tuesday morning.

        They were people like Hilda Siefert, a Marion, Kan., woman who had spent the weekend celebrating her brother's 80th birthday in Wisconsin. She changed planes in Cincinnati on Tuesday for the flight home to Wichita.

        “We were on the runway Tuesday morning and they turned around and came back,” said Mrs. Siefert, gripping a bottled water and pushing her wheeled luggage cart toward the beefed-up security checkpoints that greeted anxious ticket holders at midday Thursday.

Bonnie Sena of Westwood hugs her daughter Julie Davis before she heads home to Idaho on one of the first flights out of Cincinnati since Tuesday. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        “I need to see your ticket and a picture ID,” a smiling airport security officer told Mrs. Siefert, who fumbled through her handbag in search of her driver's license.

        “And,” the security officer said, still smiling, “I won't be the last person to ask you.”

        Mrs. Siefert and all the other ticket holders who passed through security to reach their gates were asked to produce IDs a second time before placing their carry-on luggage on the conveyor belt to go through X-ray.

        Then, they were asked to walk through not the usual one but two metal detectors, the second more sensitive than the first. One man set off alarms with the aluminum foil on the pack of cigarettes he had in his shirt pocket.

        Ruth Campbell, a Bangor, Maine, woman who had been stranded in a Covington motel for two nights while she waited for air travel to resume, had a nail file confiscated that she had been carrying with her since childhood.

        The first rule that was promulgated after the terrorist attacks was that no knives of any kind could be carried onboard airliners; Mrs. Campbell's worn nail file was close enough.

        “I just hope I get it back when we get to Bangor,” Ms. Campbell said. “If we ever get back.”

        Many in the first wave to arrive at the Cincinnati airport after the ban on commercial air travel was lifted ended up at their concourses like Mrs. Siefert — staring up at a flight departure board telling them that their flights had been canceled. She was put on standby for a later departure.
       

Canceled flights
        Allentown, Appleton, Asheville, Louisville, Chicago, Montreal, Des Moines — flights to these cities and dozens were wiped off the boards.

        Bill Neikirk, a salesman who had been in Chicago and was headed back home to Spartanburg, S.C., through Cincinnati when air traffic was shut down, swirled a soft drink, smoked a cigarette and passed the time in the Over-the-Rhine Bar in Concourse C as he waited for another flight somewhere close to home.

        “I don't mind the security thing; I understand that,” Mr. Neikirk said. “In fact, I'm glad they have it this way. They can't let something like that happen again. I just wish that when they say they are starting flights again, they'd really mean it.”

        In Concourse C early Thursday afternoon, shops and restaurants that had been closed since Monday night were stirring to life. McDonald's was the first to open.

        As flight crews and passengers arrived on shuttle buses, airport workers were there to greet them with small metal lapel buttons. The buttons showed an American flag and read: “America is #1 and don't you forget it!”

        By early afternoon passengers in Concourse C were few. Many Comair flights were canceled; others had few passengers.

        The first Comair flight out of Concourse C Thursday afternoon was Flight 5825, an 18-minute run above Interstate 75 to Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, 80 miles away.

        Capt. Bill Bremer and First Officer Rich Sanders prepared for takeoff and flight attendant Sandy Renko stood at the top of the stairs to the 50-passenger Canadair Regional Jet to greet the one and only passenger booked on the flight.

        As the plane taxied to the west runway, Ms. Renko sat across the aisle from the solitary passenger and went through the same routine of safety information she would have given had the plane been full.

        After the hijacking of planes Tuesday that were used as terrorist missiles, Ms. Renko said she will never look at her job the same again. Now, she said, “you'll be thinking more about what can happen.”

        On Tuesday morning, she was working a full plane that was on the runway at Nashville, Tenn., about to take off, when word of the hijackings and the World Trade Center disaster came, along with the FAA order to shut down all commercial flight.

        The plane turned and taxied back to the terminal.

        “And here we are back in the air,” she said to her lone passenger, as the bell rang indicating the plane's initial approach to Lexington. “It's all very hard to believe.”
       

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