Cheri Anne Hummel's cheeks are rosy and her eyes are red. She's been awake since 3 a.m. For her early morning flight from Denver. She pushes a stroller through the arrivals area of Atlanta's Domestic Terminal and carries her daughter, Ruby, in a BabyBjorn. The baby was named for her great-grandmother, Ruby Dunn Black, who cradled her for the first time last week. Now they're heading back to Cheri Anne's hometown of Thomaston, Georgia, this time for Black's funeral. It's tough to fly with a baby, but Cheri Anne says she wanted her daughter to be there with her.

Her eyes tear up as she remembers her grandmother: 'She's just always been such an influential person in my life.' It's a sad time. But Cheri Anne's cousin, Kathryn Ozley, has been smiling for the past 30 minutes as she waits. As soon as she sees Cheri Anne, she sprints forward and throws her arms around her. They're more like sisters, she says, and she's looking forward to the drive from the airport back to Thomaston. It's a trek they've made together at least 10 times before.

Slime Rancher is a PC game played by Ross and Barry as a one-off on Steam Train.

'This is our hour,' she says, 'of nobody but me and her.' As a waitress at Buffalo Wild Wings on Concourse D, Shontesa Simmons makes conversation with solo travelers while serving them food and drink. Asus P4pe Rev 1 03 Manual Woodworkers.

'I've always liked to talk to people and make them feel good,' Simmons says. Simmons stayed two hours after her shift ended yesterday to talk to a guy going through a divorce. 'He seemed sad at first but then he relaxed,' she says. They exchanged numbers when he left. He's supposed to call her in a couple of weeks to let her know if his divorce goes through. 'We'll see,' she says, smiling.

Shannon Nevin laughs and plays with her two stuffed animals, a pink Peppa Pig and Rory the Tiger. She beats them against an empty chair. The 4-year-old is the only one in her family full of energy after an overseas flight, and she's ready for the next leg, to Savannah, Georgia.

The family is making a return trip to the Isle of Hope. Hope is what Shannon's parents, Craig and Penny, had been holding out for. In 2010, Penny learned she had a rare gastrointestinal cancer. After three operations and six invasive procedures, the 36-year-old was given the all-clear in spring 2012. Three months later, she and Craig traveled from their home in the heart of England to the picturesque coastal Georgia community to get married. This time they're celebrating their first anniversary and their good fortune. 'My favorite place in the world to be is the Isle of Hope,' says Craig, 38.

Their first choice of wedding venue was a church on Tybee Island featured in the movie 'The Last Song,' about a teen romance and a parent's struggle with cancer. But the church had moved, so Penny's brother, who lives in the area, suggested a church in nearby Isle of Hope instead. And 'hope' really seemed to fit. Shannon was a flower girl; Penny's older daughter, Kayley, 20, was a bridesmaid.

The whole family, including Penny's father, Donald, is along for the anniversary trip. They played a song from the film 'The Last Song' at their wedding, and Penny has brought along a copy of the novel. It's a story that resonates as they make their way back to a cherished place.

They look like plain cardboard boxes and wooden crates, arranged in an alcove of Delta Air Lines' cargo facility, simply marked with a flight number and other data. Only their size gives them away: a little more than 7 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2 feet high. About the size of a body. Human remains are part of the job. 'It's something we're extraordinarily sensitive to,' says John Campbell, general manager of Delta's cargo operations.

He looks at the boxes neatly arranged on shelves. One box is smaller than the others; that's a child. Others may be members of the military. The Delta team takes pride in handling all cargo with care, but goes the extra mile for these shipments. 'I'm looking through here and I see three human remains shipments.

And I do see one casket, so that casket needs to be somewhere just as important,' says Campbell. 'There may be a funeral somewhere where they're waiting on that.' Jeannie got the looks and the personality in the family, like 'a young Goldie Hawn,' Dru says admiringly of her older sister. But Jeannie's bright personality began to dim exactly one year ago today with the death of her husband.

This morning Dru is on her way to bring her sister home. 'She's lonely and I'm lonely, too, for family,' says Dru, 58. 'But I can already hear the excitement in her voice.' After Jeannie's husband died, the sisters talked it over and decided that she should sell her home in Michigan and move in with Dru and her husband in Sun City Center, Florida. It's only 8:30 a.m. And Dru is already one flight closer to meeting up with her sister.

A slender woman with graying hair, small eyes and a kind face, Dru is dressed for comfort in a pair of pleated jeans, black sweatshirt and white sneakers. To help keep her going, she's got a tall black can of java-flavored Monster energy drink. Soon, Dru will catch her connecting flight to Flint, Michigan. Then, she'll drive three hours to St. Helen, where her sister is waiting for her, truck all loaded up, ready to go. 'When I say tomahawk, you say chop!

The call-and-response at Atlanta Braves All Star Grill on Concourse D is led by bar manager Saundra Cage, who's been serving and raising spirits in the airport for 15 years. Between pours of wine, beer and frozen margaritas, she says she's played therapist, bonded with regulars and waited on stars. Hulk Hogan, Jane Fonda and the late Whitney Houston are the first to come to mind.

If a traveler arrives who has already had too much to drink, Cage might comp that person an order of fries. If a military service member takes a seat, she knows someone else will inevitably pick up the tab. If a customer is rude, she reminds herself that everyone has a story. Cage once comforted a woman who was flying to visit her sick mother and comforted her again when the woman returned en route to bury her. Then there was the traveler who sat nearby at Christmastime, broke up with his girlfriend by phone and told an unsuspecting customer that he'd give her a gift in exchange for a hug. One quick hug later, as the man walked out the door, the customer opened a box to find a pair of $5,000 Tiffany diamond earrings.

Cage smiles, remembering another two strangers whose encounter in the bar turned into something more. The man invited the woman to join him on a journey to Los Angeles, rather than catching her flight to New York. When she said yes, he bought her a ticket on the spot. 'Anything is possible here,' Cage says. Under the bright lights of a glass-and-chrome clock, on a black cushioned chair, Mi Ja Choi is sleeping, her two pieces of black luggage in front of her. Atlanta police Sgt.

Vito Wallace gently awakens her. 'Excuse me, ma'am,' he says. Mi sits up startled.

She's wearing a pinstriped suit, red heels and pink nail polish. She has a black eye and bruises on the left side of her face. 'Please keep your bags close to you,' Wallace says, picking up her carry-on and sliding it under her chair. He doesn't know how Mi was injured, but officers have seen her at the airport before. She first showed up almost three weeks ago, and this is the second night in a row she's slept in the atrium of the Domestic Terminal. The airport has strict rules about people other than employees or passengers using it for lodging. At one time the airport had become the city's second-largest homeless shelter, officers say, with as many as 100 people sleeping here on any given night.

The airport is easy for the homeless to reach – it's on Atlanta's MARTA transit system, the last stop on the southbound line. But then the city started cracking down on the homeless at the airport. Officers carry copies of the relevant city code typed up on wallet-size paper.

They hand it out to people they see who have no business at the airport. 'Lodging,' the law says, 'means to sleep or remain for a period of time in any public area of the airport for the purpose of sleeping.' But Wallace doesn't ask Mi to leave. He knows she is in some sort of trouble. She is carrying a South Korean passport and a Georgia driver's license.

She thinks she may have been hurt in Concourse F, Wallace says. But she also says she might have been dreaming. Wallace says she may have dementia.

'We're not going to kick her out,' he says. 'If we do, she's going to become a victim.'

Officers like Wallace patrol the airport with vigilance. Amid travelers and workers are those on the edge of society, who show up for other reasons: to find shelter for the night, escape from a rough situation or try to steal luggage. The APD veteran has seen some crazy things in his three years as a supervisor at the airport. Like the homeless man who was off his meds and ran naked through baggage claim. Or another who defecated in the atrium.

He's also seen things that bring him down, even after two decades on the police force. He can't stand to see mothers bring young children here with nowhere else to go. 'It appears they are traveling, with their luggage and all,' he says. 'But they're not.' 'To be honest, I'd rather they come here. At least here, we can help them.'

At about 12:30, Sgt. Vito Wallace heads over to meet Officer Jeanet Franklin and her partner, Officer Willie Arnold, who patrol the public areas of the airport in the wee hours on their T3 electric standup vehicles. Atlanta police have about 18 of them at the airport, along with old-fashioned bikes. He finds Arnold and Franklin by the US Airways ticketing counter in the North Terminal. It's 12:45 when Franklin's radio crackles. 'I got a 54,' she says. That's the code for a suspicious person.

The police think there's a tall white man operating as a luggage thief. That's not so unusual. There are professional thieves who hover around the arrivals area, waiting to make off with passengers' bags. Soon, an announcement is made about the luggage carousels closing in five minutes. Franklin and Wallace walk toward the North Terminal baggage claim area. Franklin sees a man who looks disheveled and disoriented. 'The airport's about to go to sleep,' Franklin tells him.

'What's your name?' 'You got a MARTA card?' We'll get you one in there.' Wallace takes out his wallet and hands Suleiman a $5 bill. 'The last thing I want is for him to stay here,' Wallace says.

With that, Suleiman is escorted to the MARTA platform for the northbound train. He's heading to the Bankhead station, on the subway system's northwest line. 'I have a funny feeling he's going to come back,' Wallace says. The police officers walk outside to the curb to look for the suspected baggage thief.

During the day, cars are jammed bumper to bumper, but now there's not a single parked vehicle. It's a street sweeper's heaven. At 1:05, Franklin escorts a suspect back to the airport precinct. He'd been hanging out at baggage claim for four nights and had changed his story about why he was at the airport.

'This is just a warning,' she tells the man after taking his mug shot and entering his information into a thick white three-ringed binder that's a parade of similar suspects. She tells him he will be arrested the next time he's picked up like this. Then the police accompany him back to the MARTA station. The sign on the door is an indication the airport is about to go into shutdown mode. The last train departs at 1:18 a.m.

The airport isn't the scene of too many crimes, and those that occur aren't as violent as those that police see downtown. Occasionally serious crime creeps in — like the time in March when a gunman hijacked an airport shuttle bus and got shot at by police. Usually, though, it looks more like the list of incidents detectives are reviewing today at their weekly meeting: A grill ripped off a 1986 Buick, a stolen cell phone, a missing tablet, sunglasses taken from a backpack, a Kate Spade purse snatched from inside a suitcase.

'This week we have a new issue with auto theft,' says Maj. Lane Hagin, who heads up the airport precinct for the Atlanta Police Department. The rumble of a passing MARTA train rattles his office in the Domestic Terminal. So far, six cars have been reported stolen from a rental facility at the airport. Combine that with one reported last week, and it's not looking good. It's still unclear, detectives say, whether someone is stealing the cars or it's an inventory problem with rental companies, which have to keep track of hundreds of cars each day.

The detectives say they're setting up meetings to figure it out. 'I appreciate y'all,' Hagin tells them. Even with the help of some 1,800 security cameras, it's not an easy job for officers to patrol an airport where 58,000 people work and an average of 250,000 passengers travel through daily.

'It's a city out here,' says Hagin. One time, police searched for a woman's missing cat inside the airport for a couple of weeks. Eventually they found the cat, Sgt. Azie Horne says, 'somewhere down in baggage claim.' Winston Bowers is hard at work at Fire Rescue Station 32.

He's got a skillet going with scrambled eggs, beans, peppers, onions and ground turkey. In a saucepan – fire station size – he's got grits. 'You won't starve with me,' he says. 'This is about when we eat.

After this, it gets busy.' Soon Bowers makes his announcement over the loudspeakers: 'Callin' all hawgs to the trough.'

A dozen hungry men get their fill of his tasty breakfast burritos, washed down with syrupy cranberry juice. The paramedics haven't had time to clear the table when the call comes in at 8:51.

It's an eye injury. Medic 3 — a 10-year-old ambulance — pulls out of the station.

Jimmy Garner, 41, and his crew – Sgt. Yappett Scott, 38, and Firefighter Daniel Johnson, 34 – wind around the runways as they head for the North Terminal.

As the ambulance pulls up to the curb, the paramedics hop out with a stretcher and hustle over to the police precinct. Atlanta police Sgt. Vito Wallace tells them he has a Korean woman complaining of a really bad headache.

Her name is Mi Ja Choi, and she has a black eye. Scott tries to ask her questions. He's told she doesn't speak English well but that she wants to go to a hospital. The paramedics check her heartbeat, her blood pressure.

'She's been here for a while,' Wallace says. 'She is 62 years old.' Wallace had seen her sleeping next to her luggage in the atrium at midnight. It's not the first time she's spent the night in the airport. 'Is she a Georgia resident?'

'She has Georgia credentials. She has other family members here but she won't give us that information. She doesn't want us to contact them. She told the interpreter that she was hit by a car. But I doubt that came from a car,' Wallace says of the bruises on her face. Garner decides to take her to Atlanta Medical South in the nearby city of East Point.

It's the closest hospital. It's also where he was born. Repeated attempts to reach Mi or her family have been unsuccessful.

After a stop at the hospital, the crew on Medic 3 returns to Fire Station 32, which sits next to the tarmac near Concourse A. But at 10:45, the paramedics are out the door again. An employee at a taxi booth is having chest pains.

Sometimes the crew has to treat people who feel ill because of the anxiety of flying. Sometimes, someone might even be having a heart attack. The airport medics see higher-than-normal instances of deep-vein thrombosis (blood clots in the veins) and pulmonary embolism (blockage of arteries in the lungs) linked to long flights.

And they also have to respond to the silliest things — things that get travelers worked up. 'If they scratched a finger or stubbed a toe they think, 'Oh, well, we can call the medics,' says Sgt.

Yappett Scott. 'Once a week someone challenges the escalator. The escalator remains undefeated.'

One person even called because of wet feet. 'That's frustrating,' says Lt. Jimmy Garner. The guys on the crew often find themselves being social workers and customer service agents. A passenger gets sick. Garner has to treat him and then book him on the next flight or get him an airline or hotel voucher.

Administrator X Window System32 Cmd Execution there. Or sometimes Garner has to persuade a patient to pursue medical care. A lot of people want to forgo treatment so they can get on with the next leg of their journey, so they don't miss a flight. Still, it's a tough job, especially at the airport, where the distinct possibility of a plane crash hangs heavy every day. From their station, Garner and his crew sit practically on the runway, watching jets take off and land all day long.

When a tragedy like a plane crash happens anywhere, it's that much harder to stay focused. In May, a shuttle bus crashed, injuring 16 people. 'It was like trying to organize a plate of spaghetti,' Garner says. Scott finishes his thought. 'But you can't let the scene overwhelm you.' The early morning light finds Paulette Carthon behind the wheel of her 'ride' — a golf cart tricked out like a Cadillac.

It's mostly cart but part Escalade, too, a three-seater with a canopy and custom wheel rims. Her domain is the airport's economy parking lot; her mission is to shuttle people and their bags from their cars to the airport terminal. 'Nobody can do this but me,' she chuckles, steering past a 'Do Not Enter' sign. Airports are filled with people on the go. But some people at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport never leave. They fetch you from your car.

They greet you on the Plane Train. They scrub the carpets, floors and toilets — some even try to bring you the sunshine. The airport is their city, and they make it work. 'Miss Paulette' is one of those people, and everybody who flies in and out of Atlanta seems to know her. The frenzied atmosphere of the airport doesn't rattle her. 'Don't you love that breeze?' She hums and sings as departing planes screech and drone overhead.

When it occasionally gets quiet, Miss Paulette's thoughts turn to her only son, Michael. She lost him to bone cancer in 2006. Work drives away her worry. The shuttle cart is her second job. She also operates a forklift at a Caterpillar plant.

On a busy day here, she'll give between 100 and 120 people a lift. Women travelers are more inclined to accept help than men, she says. Men have a hard time admitting it when they can't find their cars. 'He's lost and you see he's lost but you ask him, and he says 'Oh, I've got it.' ' And grumpy people?

They need a lift from Miss Paulette in more ways than one. Like the ride, the smile and the banter are free. The day has barely started, but Paul Armbruster has something to say.

In fact, he'll go ahead and say it every five minutes. 'Welcome to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Curbside passenger access is limited to active loading and drop-offs. Any vehicle left unattended will be ticketed and towed immediately.' Armbruster is the recorded voice heard at curbside outside the Delta baggage claim. 'I start out as Mr. Nice Guy,' he told us.

'And it ends with me threatening to tow your car.' The Decatur, Georgia, resident, who passed away this fall, did voice-over work for more than 30 years and has trained countless others in the profession. He provided his voice to more than 50 radio stations, did promos for various TV networks and can be heard on numerous business voice systems.

Among his many commercial credits: Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut and Disney World. His ongoing reach at Atlanta's airport extends beyond curbside. His voice can also be heard in baggage claim announcing flight delays. He used to be a voice in security, but said this summer, 'I have not heard me there in a while.' It's a slow morning at security. On many days, lines of sleepy business travelers snake all the way back toward the atrium. But today, the traffic is light – and so are the attitudes.

A young man in a T-shirt that says 'trickster' struggles to free his license from his bulging wallet. The businessman behind him carries a black leather briefcase in one hand and a suit jacket in the other. A quarter tumbles from the pocket, bounces and rolls toward the TSA podium. A bald officer peers over his reading glasses and smiles. We can't take bribes,' he jokes.

'And not from you either, young man,' he says to a toddler who bumps past in an expensive stroller, waving a dollar in his hand. The boy's hurried mom gently puts her hand on the officer's arm, leans in and confides: 'I buy him all sorts of fancy toys, but he prefers the simple stuff like cash.' 'As long as he doesn't start eating it, ma'am, it's not such a bad idea. Maybe that's a sign he'll become an investment banker, support you in your old age.'

Mixologist Tiffanie Barriere is behind the bar at One Flew South on Concourse E, muddling a sugar cube with angostura bitters for an Old Fashioned cocktail. These days, she says, flying has an edge.

'Everybody needs a drink. It just calms you down.' One Flew South opened five years ago as the first fine-dining option at the world's busiest airport. Esquire magazine named it one of the best bars in America, while Food & Wine called it 'Airport Food Worth Flying For.' Barriere says the restaurant has a loyal following. Some customers book a layover in Atlanta so they can dine here; others place carryout orders as soon as they are allowed to make calls after landing.

If travelers order a bottle of wine but aren't able to finish it, the restaurant will cork and bag it for them to enjoy later. If you can take your soda to go, why not a bottle of wine? Executive chef Duane Nutter says operating a fine-dining establishment in an airport has its challenges. Kitchen space is limited, and knives must be tethered for security reasons.

Working at One Flew South 'was the first time I ever cut myself in the thigh,' Nutter says. The restaurant became the first in the airport to offer customers metal cutlery. It had to be TSA-approved. And 'knife audits' happen regularly. They're carefully counted to make sure none goes missing. Step through the doors of the Delta Sky Club on Concourse F – and into serenity.

This is where travelers with access find peace and comfort. It's a magical place, it seems, where babies do not cry.

Club members are greeted with hot showers, plush seats and a complimentary breakfast, not to mention a warm welcome from Kumok 'Jennifer' Zajac, who's worked in the airline's frequent flier lounges for 14 years. She calls the club her second home.

'I see all my Diamonds and Platinums more than my husband.' Arrangements of pussy willow branches fill vases. A man sleeps, his feet propped up, on an outdoor deck.

Near the exit are newspapers and magazines in French, Japanese, Spanish and more. Above the door, a line of Audemars Piguet clocks, each reportedly valued at $10,000, tells the time in Atlanta, Tokyo, Moscow, Paris and Mexico City.

Zajac leads visitors to the area offering showers and massages. 'Some people stay 20, 30 minutes,' she says. 'Others never come out!' Etched in glass along the hallway are quotes from historical figures, writers, artists. Says one, from 19th-century essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau: 'You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.' Even if the Delta Sky Club is a kind of cloud nine, that doesn't mean the serenity is never broken.

Zajac tells the story of a drunk guy who got angry and decided to head-butt a $60,000 sliding door. 'He slammed his head like this,' she says, imitating through laughter the man's absurd move that left him bloodied and the door kaput. 'When the businessmen are angry, I see them as big babies. You have to listen -­ and pamper them.' She and her co-workers 'try to be sunshine' for those passing through – even when travelers turn stormy.

'I've been really trying, baby/ Trying to hold back these feelings for so long/ And if you feel like I feel baby/ Come on, oh come on/ Let's get it on.' It's a karaoke morning in the flight crew lounge of Southwest Airlines, and Lashondra Dukes is belting out a Marvin Gaye classic.

Dukes thrusts her left arm into the air as she mimics Gaye's soaring falsetto and sways her hips sensually to the slow juke-joint grind rhythm of the song. As she cradles the microphone in her right hand, giggling flight attendants cheer her on. Just a few feet away, several airline pilots with crew cuts and clean-shaven faces sit silently in a row of black leather chairs, staring at ESPN's 'Sports Center' with vacant expressions. It's 10:40 a.m., and the day is ratcheting up for thousands of passengers streaming through the cavernous corridors above the lounge. But many of the people in this cramped break room tucked near an airport runway have been working since dawn. It's a noisy scene, with ground crew members, captains, and flight attendants all milling about while checking The Weather Channel's Doppler radar.

The place is even more chaotic this morning because Southwest — which merged with AirTran — transformed the lounge into a vendors' fair, complete with karaoke and merchants selling their wares from booths. Renee Kleppel, an AirTran flight attendant, is getting ready for a noon flight to Baltimore. Kleppel left her home in Cleveland this morning and will be in the air most of the day. With her perfectly coiffed brunette hair and fire-engine red lipstick, she looks like a model – and glows like a woman in love. Kleppel went on a cruise recently and fell in love with a man named Jim. The catch: He lives in Australia. But that's not a problem for a flight attendant.

'Because I can travel, I'm getting married and moving to Australia in December,' she says. 'It doesn't seem far. The world shrinks, big time.' The distance between people also shrinks in her job. She raves about a recent trip she took to Miami Beach with some of her colleagues. 'We had a gay guy, a married black woman, me and a white pilot and a black pilot,' she says. 'You probably never would have put us together.

But we went to Miami Beach, and we had the best time together. You just kind of make it happen.' It's lunchtime and the 'family' has gathered in a break room near a runway. They're the ground crew for Southwest and AirTran.

They collapse into the seats at cafeteria-style tables with weary groans and slap hands while greeting one another. Anthony Baty sits alone at a table. He is a broad-shouldered man with a trim goatee, short haircut and a military bearing. 'This is not a job for the weak and weary,' he says, his Brooklyn accent still thick though he's worked in Atlanta for 13 years. There are no Sky Clubs for ground crew members. They're outside in all conditions, lifting back-straining cargo and working amid moving airplanes and tons of equipment. The men at the tables here are covered with grime, and sweat trickles down their faces.

They may look like laborers, but they think like mathematicians. When a commercial airliner taxis to a stop at the gate, it disgorges a motley collection of luggage. For the uninitiated, it all looks the same.

But Baty sees a series of numbers. 'Weights and balances are really important in the airline industry,' he says. Ground crews must estimate the approximate weight of each bag. Every time they load a plane, they have to make sure the weight is properly distributed.

What happens to a plane if the weight of the luggage is off? Baty snorts in indignation. The prospect seems unthinkable – it would risk the plane's safety. As far as Baty is concerned, the 'family' makes Atlanta's airport work. 'These planes can't fly without these bags,' he says. 'We're at the heart of the operation.

I take pride in that.' Cindy Crafton sets up a vendor's table and pulls out a chair in the Southwest Airlines flight crew lounge. She's a tanned woman with auburn hair and a bright smile and eyes that crinkle when she laughs. Crafton is an AirTran flight attendant, but today she is an entrepreneur. She is selling Hip Klips, clips that attach minipurses to pants or bags.

Like many of her colleagues, she works a second job to supplement her income. But flying is her first love. She's been a flight attendant for 38 years. In the old days, Crafton says, her job was filled with glamour. The airport concourse was her runway — she loved sashaying through airports in fabulous outfits with her head held high. She never threw away a uniform. 'I have a stash about yay big in my closet,' she says, holding her hands about 2 feet apart.

She ticks off the retro styles: pillbox hats, polyester leisure suits from the 1970s. 'I missed the hot pants by six months,' she says, smiling.

She also misses the way passengers used to dress. 'When I started flying, they put on their best Sunday clothes: hats, coats, ties. They respected us. We respected them. Now you have someone coming in with wife-beaters, flip-flops — and they're half-naked.'

One day, a woman boarded the plane wearing a hideous outfit. 'It looked like a pair of pajamas,' Crafton says. 'It was an older lady, and you could tell she was very proud. I said to her, 'I love your outfit. You look so nice today.' And she looked at her husband and said, 'See, I told you it didn't look like pajamas.' ' Crafton laughs.

'It made her day. I try to pick a person I know won't get a compliment. 'You have a pretty smile; you have gorgeous eyes.' I give it to them.'

You've seen it happen on airport concourses: captains and flight attendants briskly disappearing behind mysterious doors with keypad entries. Behind one of those doors on Concourse A is a concrete staircase that leads down to the Flight Station. It looks like any other airport souvenir shop until you take a closer look at the items for sale: captain's hats and shirts with various numbers of stripes, which can only be purchased by crew members who can show proof of rank; luggage tassels labeled 'crew' with different airport codes; and books, jewelry and model airplanes made by airline staff and crew.

Delta flight attendant Jennifer Reason stops in to pick up a pair of stockings and a can opener before she boards a flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico. She needs the stockings because the pair she was wearing caught a run; the can opener is to help her pop open beverages during the flight, because after years of doing it without a tool, her hand hurts. 'Occupational hazard,' she says, smiling, as she digs out her wallet from her bag. Ron Levitz bounds into the hallway outside the AirTran flight lounge. A trim man with the build of a distance runner and a close-cropped haircut, Levitz radiates energy. The AirTran pilot once worked at assorted office jobs.

'I hated it,' he says. Flying is his first love. When he was a boy, he actually got goose bumps the first time he watched a plane take off. But translating his love into a career took years.

The competition for a pilot's job at a major airline is fierce. The flying schedule and benefits are good, Levitz says, and a pilot can make up to $200,000 a year. There's also the sheer fun of flying. Good pilots can't live in the moment – they have to anticipate what may happen in five minutes or 10.

'There's no flight that's the same,' he says. 'Every time I get in the airplane, it makes me think. It makes me evaluate. It keeps me on my toes. You're never bored. Every time you go to work, you're challenged.'

Has he ever faced a close call? Been nervous in the cockpit? 'Absolutely,' he says.

'There's not a pilot who would tell you otherwise. There are times when you have a situation in the cockpit when something malfunctions or there's weather-related delays, like snow or fog. You have to really be on your game.' Pilots must be fit as well. They must pass rigorous medical exams every six months and take extensive flight simulator tests each year.

Levitz started flying at 19 and has no plans to stop. 'Most of the pilots out there have a passion for their job,' he says. 'If you don't love it, you couldn't do this job, because you're away from home a lot and there are so many things you have to put up with.' He wouldn't have it any other way. 'There are some days when I'm flying that I just look out of the window and I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world.' With one hand in her mother's and the other clutching the handle of her pink Barbie suitcase, a little girl walks off the train toward the T gates, parroting what she's just heard.

'T as in tango,' she says, and then skips. 'T as in tango.' Announcements on the Plane Train stick with travelers being whisked from stop to stop.

For some, including three young women, they spark giggles. The recent college graduates can't contain themselves after hearing: 'The next stop is for B gates. B as in bravo.' 'B as in bootylicious!' They squeal in response. A woman whispers to the man beside her, 'E as in echo,' as she leans in for a kiss.

A young boy crinkles his brow in puzzlement before saying, 'F as in foxtrot?' Being the voice of the airport subway known as the Plane Train can be surreal. Just ask Sharon Feingold, who now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, but hears herself whenever she travels through her hometown airport.

She can be heard on the Plane Train as well as the SkyTrain, which travels outside the airport to hotels, a rental car center and a convention center. Feingold, who's in her mid-30s, was a student of the late Paul Armbruster, whose voice politely threatens to tow people's cars outside Delta baggage claim.

The Plane Train gig, more than any she's had, earns her attention in unlikely places. 'I was at a geek convention,' she says, 'and people asked for autographs because of this train.'

William Talton straps on a vacuum that looks like the backpack Bill Murray wore in 'Ghostbusters.' 'Who you gonna call?'

He jokes, invoking the movie's famous line. The reference is appropriate; the baggage claim area looks like a ghost town. It's 2 a.m., and the airport is virtually deserted except for the night cleaning crew. A woman vacuums behind the airline ticketing counters and a two-person crew changes light bulbs in fixtures hanging 20 feet overhead. Talton is responsible for keeping 19 baggage carousels clean. He uses a chisel to free luggage tags, candy wrappers and other debris stuck in the carousel's blades. He sprays a liquid graffiti remover on each blade and uses a mop to clean up.

The citrus smell permeates the vast baggage claim area. Talton details Carousel No. 3 with the precision of a fine jeweler. Every Thursday, airport officials conduct an inspection. He's never failed one. 'I used to work as a customer service supervisor at Sprint, you know,' he says. 'They outsourced my job to India.'

That was five years ago, as the recession took hold. Talton lost his house, his car. He took the airport job to avoid homelessness. 'I did this out of desperation.' He says he makes $7.70 an hour.

That's what he made as a 14-year-old boy. 'I couldn't afford to let pride get in the way,' he says and goes back to his mopping.

The first flight arrives in two hours. The Southwest baggage claim area looks like an abandoned movie set. No one is behind the ticket counter either, and the curbside traffic outside has evaporated.

The whir of a floor buffer breaks the silence. Bobby Williams methodically pushes a propane burnisher over the linoleum floor near the entrance to the atrium.

His body is there, but his mind is on his faith and dreams. Williams wants to be somewhere else five years from now. He is a soft-spoken man with plump cheeks. 'I would like to own my own cleaning service,' he says. 'I just have a passion for what I do. I love to do floors.

I love to see them shine.' Williams calls himself a floor tech, and he's only been on the job for six months. He's still getting accustomed to sleeping during the day and missing time with his 15-year-old son, Bobby Jr. He sees himself as an artist, and the airport floor is his canvas. Some visitors compliment his work; others walk by while he's there and treat him with indifference. Williams' faith carries him through the grind. On his breaks, he watches Christian movies on his smartphone.

He attends World Changers Church International, a megachurch in suburban Atlanta. He's a fan of the church's pastor, Creflo Dollar.

'He's down to earth,' Williams says of Dollar. 'He hits home with a lot of things I need to hear. When I go, it's like he's having a conversation with me.' Williams says his faith encourages him to believe in his dream. 'It gives me hope that everything is going to come to fruition and teaches me to believe in things higher than myself,' Williams says. 'If I'm having a bad day, I just say it's going to be better.

The sun will rise tomorrow, and everything will pass.' And one day, Williams will paint his own canvas. Anita Daniel slips on a pair of goggles, grapples with the hose of a vacuum machine and wheels it into an empty men's bathroom on Concourse T. She flips the switch, and the machine rumbles to life, sounding like a tugboat's foghorn. Daniel has been cleaning bathrooms at the airport for seven years. It's 3:52 a.m. And she's deep into her 10:45 p.m.

'I just love doing bathrooms, ' she says. ' I really do. It's peaceful. I'm here by myself.'

Even when she is surrounded by travelers, Daniel can feel alone. Men will often ignore her cleaning signs and barge into the bathroom while she's there. 'They can be very disrespectful,' she says. And I clean men's bathrooms. I don't have a choice because that's my job.

They will walk in on me, and see me and go right on in and use the bathroom. And then they look at you like you're invading their privacy.' She has a ritual to channel her anger.

She tells the rude men what she thinks of them – after they leave the bathroom. 'I just do it in private,' she says. 'I just mumble to myself.' She doesn't have those problems with women. 'Some of the nicest people are women,' Daniel says. 'They'll see me working and tell me how nice a job I'm doing and thank me for keeping everything clean.

That makes you feel good, for someone to compliment you on your work.' Daniel's mother, Louise, also worked for a cleaning service and taught her to do her best. 'It can get nasty,' she says, 'but I'm used to it.

I used to be a weak-stomach person but once I started cleaning bathrooms, that went away.' The work may not be glamorous, but Daniel says there is dignity in all work. 'I just don't understand people who don't work,' she says. 'How do you live as a human being and don't work?

I've been working since I was 18, and now I'm 52. I'm a hard-working person.' Frank Colladay wears a neon-yellow and orange vest over his tweed jacket. On the back, it says Chaplain. At 3:15 p.m., he begins a long walk to Concourse D. Here he plays the role of good Samaritan, looking for travelers in distress. He has to decide when to ask if someone needs help.

Sometimes, it's a hard call. He doesn't want to intrude. On this day, he approaches a passenger who looks lost. She's trying to figure out how to get to gate D23 to catch a flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then to Rome. 'Come on,' he says, 'follow me.' Colladay is retired from the ministry, though he's still a pastor emeritus at Dahlonega Presbyterian Church, about 90 minutes north of the airport. Every Wednesday, he drives down to help out in the airport chaplain's office.

The chief chaplain, Chester Cook, says the work isn't so much about faith as it is about customer service. A few weeks ago, Cook helped buy Greyhound tickets for four young friends whose car got impounded. Another time a doctor came in to see him. 'I'm a rich man,' he told Cook, 'but my wallet got stolen, and I need $38 to get my car out of the parking lot.'

Others have more serious problems. Maybe they are on their way to a funeral. Or seeking shelter at the airport because of domestic violence. For the 58,000 airport employees, the small interfaith chapel in the domestic atrium is their church.

Just as soldiers feel better when they see a chaplain in the foxhole, airport employees and passengers find the chapel to be a refuge in a place with plenty of opportunity for anxiety. 'I saw an elderly woman in front of an AirTran counter crying once,' Cook says. 'She was afraid of the process of flying.' Earlier in the summer, he dealt with the suicide of a passenger in the International Terminal. His office is next to the USO, and he often speaks with soldiers suffering from combat stress. 'We're just scratching the surface, though,' Cook says.

'We're helping 10 or 15 people a day. There are 150 more that we didn't help. The airport is so big.' In Colladay's first shift at the airport, he helped a woman who was returning to her native China to renew her passport. He had to navigate U.S., Chinese and Delta Air Lines bureaucracies. 'It was enough to make this chaplain cuss.' He tells people to keep their eyes on their luggage.

He nags them about the boarding sequence. He orders them to pick up their tired bones and schlep to a different gate. 'All that annoying stuff – well, that's me,' says Tony Messano, of Alpharetta, Georgia, whose voice can be heard in Delta terminals across the globe.

It's 8:12 p.m., and travelers to Buenos Aires are being treated to a gate announcement by Messano. 'Flight 101 with service to Buenos Aires,' his recorded voice tells everyone, is 'departing concourse E as in echo, gate 8.' Messano has been doing voice-over work for 25 years. He's recorded numbers, the names of destinations, and gate letters so that any variation can be pieced together on a computer to make the necessary announcements.

He says he's cursed himself when his voice told him to move for a gate change. And he's gotten the stink eye from his own wife.

They were in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, sitting at their gate having a nice conversation, when his voice kept butting in. 'She gives me a glare like 'Stop interrupting me,' he says. 'And I'm like 'Well, it's me, but it's not me.'

' These days his voice is being tested for use with similar technology in the New York City subway system. If he lands that job, he says, 'I imagine it'll involve a lot of cursing and screaming at the top of my lungs instead of the gentle prodding I do for Delta.' Messano, though, isn't the only one making announcements in Delta terminals. At alternate gates, a female voice addresses travelers.

It belongs to Susan Bennett of Sandy Springs, Georgia, who used to be the voice of the Plane Train. She got into this work in the 1970s by accident.

She was a jingle singer, showed up for a job, and the voice-over talent was a no-show. Bennett, who still sings and is in a band, was asked to fill in. Now her voice can be heard at Delta gates worldwide. She can also be heard in commercials, on GPS systems and on company phone systems. Bennett's biggest claim to fame? In America, she is the original voice of Siri, the Apple iPhone's virtual personal assistant..

'I end up talking to myself quite a lot,' she says. Does she ever yell at herself? 'No,' she answers. 'I don't want to hurt my feelings.'

It's the end of a long day for Laura Wilt – yes, the last name is indeed spelled 'like a dying flower' – and now she's in a panic. She can't find her parking ticket and has no idea where she left her car early this morning. Her mother suffered a stroke and she rushed down to Tampa, Florida, to talk to the doctors. Now all she wants to do is drive home to Dallas in suburban Paulding County. Wilt checks the pockets of her royal blue skinny jeans. She looks inside her wallet.

Checks the compartments of her carry-on. Wilt is getting worried when help arrives on a Segway.

The driver is Timothy J. Watkins, operations manager for courtesy vans and shuttle carts. He and two dozen employees cruise around helping people who've lost their parking stubs. In a place with more than 30,000 spaces, that happens about 400 times a month.

They also give about 500 jump-starts a month. Watkins has a volley of questions for Wilt: When did she come in? What highway did she take? What lot did she park in? Does she remember her car tag number? There is a method to this madness.

The airport has a system for steering cars into the long-term parking A, B and C lots. So knowing what day Wilt arrived could offer a clue. So can the cameras that photograph the license plate of every car that enters the lots. Trucks with cameras also drive around every night and photograph the tags on parked cars. So if you have your registration or know your tag number, your car can be found in the computer. Wilt makes one more pass through her possessions. She dumps out the contents of two bags.

Oh, wait, snap! Wilt unzips a side pocket in her purse and sure enough, there it is: a pink ticket. Shuttle bus driver Ron Dellingham takes her straight to the A lot. Her gray Sonata is parked in section 19A. Laura Wilt is on her way home. John Mann slumps next to a trash can in the back of the roped-off arrivals area, fiddling with his cell phone.

Traffic flowed better than expected, and now he's stuck with time to kill, waiting with a bright orange poster on his lap. 'Welcome Home Susie,' it says, with 'I ♥ U!' Scribbled in one corner. John first met Susie when they were 9 years old, performing in a school production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' She was Alice. He was the Cheshire Cat. Decades later and a continent apart, they reconnected on Facebook.

They started talking every night, then visiting each other on weekends. She moved to Seattle, where he lived. He proposed to her on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010, hanging a sign over the fireplace that said 'Will You Marry Me?' She said yes. They're married now, and they haven't been apart long.

Susie's been away from their suburban Atlanta home for just a few days, helping her mom move to Houston. But John knows it's been a tough week, and he wants to make her smile.

This sort of moment plays out at all hours in the world's busiest airport. Amid the rush, the chaos, the flow of foot traffic, there are anticipated reunions, dreaded farewells and human exchanges — big and small — while people wait. Susie had always wanted someone to hold up a sign for her at the airport. But John never had the courage. She is a trained singer and actress, the one who really knows how to shine onstage.

He is a software developer — more of a behind-the-scenes guy. But yesterday, John decided he'd put himself out there. A kit of glitter and glue sticks and cut-out letters later, here he is.

'Making it was easy,' he says, 'but walking through the airport with it wasn't.' People stare.

He avoids the glances and looks down at his phone. Around 11:45 p.m., he checks online and sees that Southwest Flight 51 has landed. He springs into position, planting himself at the front of the arrivals waiting area. He props up the sign with one hand and stares intently at the escalators that bring throngs of passengers to baggage claim daily.

It's nearly midnight, though, and the escalators – earlier packed with people – now roll up mostly empty. There's a man in a business suit, a couple who look lost, but no sign of Susie. John looks at his phone again, then gazes off in the distance, toward an empty gift shop. Suddenly a sea of people surges up the escalators. Susie steps off and wanders to the right, scanning the scattered clumps of people in front of her. Seeing no familiar faces, she turns to the left, walking a few steps forward. The bright orange sign catches her eye, and she stops in her tracks.

John is looking the other way. But in a matter of seconds, their eyes meet. John flashes a Cheshire Cat grin.

He stands up, looking proud. She walks toward him, beaming.

'I made your sign,' he says. 'I love you.' Having missed her connection to Omaha, Nebraska, Joanne Ford lets go of what she can't control and sinks into a spa chair. The business traveler, who works in health care IT, is on the road every week. This day started at 8:30 a.m. In Rochester, New York, and she has hours to go before she sleeps.

But like the nearby businessman whose face is planted in a massage chair, she's learned to make the best of her often-extended layovers. Getting manicures and pedicures at XpresSpa is part of the drill. It's not like she has time to pamper herself, after all, when she's home in Honey Creek, Iowa. Why not do it in the airport? Colin Lam, who's filing Ford's nails, has worked at this shop on Concourse A for more than a year and a half.

He says he often plays psychiatrist, talking to customers about all sorts of issues – job woes, relationship snafus, you name it. Lighter banter, especially given the people-watching the airport offers, often turns to fashion critiques. 'I just saw one today and said, 'Wow,' says Ford, shaking her head at the memory of the traveler in 6-inch heels and a tight cougar-skin dress. 'Then she stood up and I said, 'Wow.' And then she fell out and I said, 'Wow!' ' Another traveler, getting his feet rubbed one seat over, leans back and smiles.

A woman fully reclined in a chair around the corner, getting her temples massaged, appears to be in a blissed-out slumber. 'People come in in a sour mood, and once they leave their whole disposition has changed,' Lam says. 'We love bad weather.' Planted in the arrivals lobby, a banner and loved ones await Holly Houston, 31. For a year and a half she's been in Brisbane, Australia, on a Christian mission with Operation Mobilization. Her mother's camera phone is poised, ready to capture the daughter she's missed as she comes up and off the escalator to see them.

Next to her parents are friends from childhood, high school, church and college. All of them crane their necks and hold their breath, scanning the faces of travelers as they stream in. Finally, they release a collective squeal as she runs into their arms. Kunyu Harun Henu is slumped over in a blue padded seat, 8,000 miles from home.

He started flying 25 hours ago — and still has another day to go. The journey might unsettle any traveler. But for Henu, a 39-year-old pastor from Kiserian, Kenya, the problem is nerves. This is his first time flying. The plane's trembling during takeoff is what first got him.

The man sitting next to him sensed his fear. This is normal, he told Henu. Planes rattle during takeoff, and sometimes they hit turbulence in the air. 'After he explained, I was OK,' Henu says. His plan was to fly from Nairobi to London, then Atlanta, then St. Louis before finally heading to Missouri State University to start his master's degree in religious studies.

The whole trip was supposed to take about a day. But after a nine-hour layover in London, a problem with a passenger forced a two-hour delay on the tarmac. And that delay caused Henu to miss his connecting flight in Atlanta to St. That's why he finds himself almost alone in the middle of the night in Atlanta's massive new International Terminal.

He can't fly to Missouri for another eight hours. Other travelers might have grown agitated by the snafus.

'No airline is immune to problems,' he says. 'In life, people expect everything to be perfect. That's human nature. When there's a problem, they want someone to blame. But things happen.'

Granted, Henu is exhausted and barely able to lift his eyelids. But he refuses to sleep. Who knows what could happen to his belongings — one big suitcase full of clothes and a smaller suitcase packed with books?

So the first-time flier sits and waits, making small talk with the occasional passer-by. Chad Spicer is the kind of guy who thinks nothing of wearing cowboy boots, a hefty belt buckle and silver jewelry through airport security.

'I just take it all off and shove everything in a bag beforehand. But I usually need four to five trays to get everything through,' he says, laughing.

He’s also the kind of guy who looks completely at home sitting in a bank of empty chairs at gate C21, wearing a pair of dark aviator sunglasses while munching on a foil-wrapped Chick-fil-A breakfast sandwich. An artist and graphic designer, Spicer splits his time between New Orleans and a farm just over the state line in Mississippi, where several other artists live and work on their own projects. Each piece of art he wears has a story. His belt buckle bears a javelina in relief, recalling his childhood pastime of boar hunting. It’s a family tradition on his father's side, which includes Choctaw and Cherokee roots.

An ex-girlfriend made him the silver ring with a druse meteorite stone. He lost it once at New York's LaGuardia airport, but someone turned it in. When he called to inquire about it, the person on the phone said he knew 'someone was going to want it back,' and sent it to him free of charge. His older brother made the brown and white bracelet from carved wood and bird bones. They're close, and now that his brother's children have left for college he has more time to spend with Spicer, which is what brings him to Atlanta today. He's connecting through Hartsfield-Jackson from New Orleans on his way to Minneapolis, where his brother lives.

They've got a big hunting and fishing trip planned in northern Minnesota up toward Canada. They'll use every scrap of whatever they kill, just the way they did growing up in rural Louisiana. It's that time of the day when it's relatively slow at the MAC cosmetics store in the new International Terminal, allowing employees a chance to try out new products and hone their skills.

Today, they're practicing layering effects with new eye shadow colors. Most of the time, people wander in to kill time without anything particular in mind, says the store manager, who declines to give her name, citing company policy. Other times, people pick up items they forgot. Do they get a lot of business? 'Yes,' she says.

'You'd be surprised.' Tim Ferrill, 33, gingerly navigates his way through the crowded gate at A29. He's on crutches, his right leg in a brace. The torn ACL — courtesy of a soccer game played with his five brothers in Birmingham, Alabama, where his family was just visiting — makes this day's journey more complicated, especially for his 28-year-old wife, Jodi. They're awaiting their second flight of the day, this one to Denver, and they are far from alone. In the area along the wall that the family's claimed, Jodi's doling out single French fries to their five young children, with the fluidity and calm instincts of a mother bird. All under age 8, the two youngest sit in the bulky stroller, the one she loads up with all the stuff Tim can't carry.

Small backpacks are scattered about, the responsibility of the older three kids, who are accustomed to pitching in. 'I know how to fold shirts, pants and shorts,' boasts Seth, 4, before spinning around and squawking for another fry. With such a large brood, the Ferrills have a system. They face challenges one at a time, pack light and 'pray a lot,' says Jodi. 'One thing that makes this easier is we home-school,' adds Tim. 'The kids are used to being together.'

They've been on the road for nearly three weeks now. Once they arrive in Denver, they'll stay with friends for two days before road-tripping back home to Southern California. 'We've got a 15-passenger van,' Tim says. 'Room to grow.' Denise Sardinha wasn't supposed to be here, sitting all alone in front of gate F10 in the middle of the night. She should be asleep in her San Francisco home, getting ready to send her 7-year-old son, David, to his first day of school in the morning. Instead, she is 2,400 miles away, waiting to pick up her boy after a booking mishap sent her scrambling across the country.

'He was visiting his dad in the middle part of Brazil,' says Sardinha, who is also Brazilian. 'Because he's 7, he's not supposed to have a connecting flight.' Sardinha thought she had resolved that problem by paying a $100 unaccompanied minor fee, but after she booked she found out that Delta won't allow connecting flights for children under the age of 8 traveling alone. So she had to take two days off work from her housecleaning business and jump on a four-hour flight to Atlanta to meet her son and accompany him to San Francisco. David, meanwhile, had to miss his previously scheduled flight and wait another day. 'I wasn't happy at all.

He starts school tomorrow,' Sardinha says. 'Then I felt better flying with him to San Francisco because that made him feel more secure.' She's been sitting at the Atlanta airport for five hours, with another three hours to go until she sees her son.

Before this trip, the longest she'd gone without being with him is two days. Now, it's been two months. She passes the time watching clips of the recent MTV Video Music Awards on her laptop. And behind the weary look on her face is the excitement of a mother who can't wait to embrace her little boy. The middle-aged man wears a Columbia T-shirt, a shoutout to the university in New York. He looks at his son, who's heading off to college. The tall young man with the full head of curly hair wears a preppy collared shirt – decidedly not like his dad's.

He looks at his father, a little unsure of what will come next. The father leans in and gives his son an awkward bro-hug. The young man turns bright red. Extended family stands around watching while his mother stands off to the side.

'You'll do well son,' an older aunt says to him. 'We know you will, we're proud of you,' she calls after him as the young man snakes his way through the maze toward the security checkpoint. He tries not to look back. Four grandsons await the arrival of Gayle and JB Franklin. A fifth grandbaby – a girl – is on the way. The Franklins' son and daughter-in-law and their kids, all under 7, live in London. In a few hours, the couple from Lilburn, Georgia, and their 'six big honking suitcases,' filled mostly with clothes for the children, will start their trip across the pond.

Gayle and JB, who are in their late 50s, will visit with family in London, then fly to Italy, then head back to London before coming home. They figured three weeks straight would be too long to stay with their son's family. 'Like fish, we'd start to stink,' says Gayle. But right now, anticipation is building. She smiles broadly, thinking about their arrival and 'all those little noses pressed against the third-floor window.' Travel often brings people together in ways they wish they hadn't experienced. But at least Chiara James now knows that airline employees can be helpful.

She had to miss her flight to find out. The single mother from Atlanta is traveling with her 7-month-old daughter and elderly mother. A necessary diaper change for the little one meant they arrived at gate D1A for an AirTran flight to Detroit moments after the door closed. And that door, despite her pleas, stayed closed.

The gate agent whose job is to watch the plane push back from the jetway learned her story after he returned to the terminal. What he heard frustrated him. 'They pick and choose who they want to let on,' says the agent, a contractor for Southwest and AirTran who didn't want his name used.

'It frustrates me because it happens all the time.' He rebooked James and her family on the next flight to Detroit at 3:15 p.m. With assigned seats, not just on the standby list. Then, he escorted the family to Concourse C and joined James in the smoking lounge while her mother and daughter waited outside.

'It's just stressful,' James says. 'But it's good to know some people care and are willing to help you.' The guy's been sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar for five hours. The New Yorker missed his connection to Indianapolis.

With hours to kill, this spot in Concourse D seems as good as any. Earlier, it served as a makeshift office for a few hours, but he went off the clock. That's when the boyfriend-girlfriend team of Zach Sperry and Kelsey Smith walked in. They came to grab a quick bite and a drink before heading off to Florida, but then Brad happened. 'We've had three shots together!' Sperry announces from a corner of the bar. 'That's what brings people together.'

'We're new best friends!' Brad says, as they all laugh.

'They've only been here an hour and a half. I've been taking attendance since I've been here so long.' As passengers pour off the escalators into the arrivals lobby during a busy night-time rush, Nar Lungali leans on an empty luggage cart, picks up his phone and starts dialing. 'She is not coming today,' he says, talking with one family member after another.

The case aide waiting with him from the International Rescue Committee just told him his older sister's flight from Chicago was canceled. The hot meal waiting for her in nearby Clarkston, known to some as the Ellis Island of Georgia because of the large number of refugees who land there, will have to wait. Fried chicken and rice.

'Delicious, spicy food,' he says — the kind of meal that will make his sister feel at home, even more than 8,000 miles away from their native Bhutan. It was only two days ago that she called from Kathmandu and told him she was moving from Nepal to America with her husband and two sons. 'She was so excited,' he says. He could hear it in her voice. He's excited, too. He hasn't seen her in more than two years.

He can't wait to talk to her about how old friends left behind in the Beldangi 2 camp in eastern Nepal are doing. Tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees live in Nepalese camps. But nearly 80,000 have left in the past six years as part of a resettlement push to move them into better living conditions. Now — finally — his sister is among them. And he'll come back to the airport tomorrow to welcome her.

Standing here, watching passengers stream by, he remembers the day he first came to Atlanta more than two years ago on a flight from New York after leaving Nepal. The memory of the airport is still fresh in his mind. 'So many people,' he says. He smiles, thinking of the way his life began to change that day, the way his sister's life will change now, too.

For him, the difference between life in the United States and Nepal is clear. 'It's just like heaven,' he says, 'and hell.' Mike Ryan chomps on a stick of gum and clicks his pen as he keeps an eye on the Airbus A319 heading for Atlanta.

It's Delta Flight 1767 arriving from Flint, Michigan. Ryan can't see the jet. It's just a blip on his screen in a dark, curved, windowless room 30 miles from the airport. Ryan is one of two dozen air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration's Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON. They sit at radar consoles, their faces bathed in an eerie green glow. The Airbus is one of more than a dozen planes Ryan is tracking.

Controllers here handle planes that are 4 to 40 miles from the airport. They're part of an intricate network that keeps air traffic moving — and part of the huge behind-the-scenes effort that keeps Atlanta's airport humming.

From controllers and ground crews to baggage handlers and a cargo 'cowboy,' not a single jet could get off the runway without their help. If the nearby Atlanta FAA Center, which handles the entire region, is the highway of the sky, then TRACON is the offramp, guiding traffic to the parking garage — the traffic control tower at the airport. At least that's how the controllers here describe it. Even within TRACON, the controllers have different roles. Today, Ryan is the 'feeder,' slowing planes down, lowering their altitude and handing them off to another controller, known as the 'final' — who hands them off to the airport tower. A self-described aviation junkie, Ryan saw a newspaper ad years ago about qualifying for air traffic control training.

He took the civil service exam, which led to a 22-year career path from the Bay Area to Southern California to Cleveland and, five years ago, Atlanta. He says he 'fell into it — and fell in love with it.' Within 30 seconds Ryan issues directions to five pilots flying hundreds of passengers. 'Delta 1767, descend and maintain 7,000,' Ryan says in a clear monotone.

Two seconds later, he calls another A319, this one flying in from Little Rock, Arkansas: 'Delta 1733, descend and maintain one-two-thousand.' Next an Air Canada jet: 'AC 4940, descend and maintain 7,000.'

In no time, Ryan goes back to Delta 1767, to tell the pilot to use another frequency to reach the 'final,' who's sitting at a radar screen next to Ryan's. The 'final' will guide the plane to within 4 miles of the runway before handing it off to the airport tower. 'Contact Approach 1-2-7-point-2-5,' Ryan says. Brian Wilante scans the room, then the horizon. A gentle wind is blowing from the northwest. Every few seconds a low rumble rises from below as an airliner throttles into the sky.

Wilante is nearly 400 feet above the runway in 'The Cab' — the top of the tallest air traffic control tower in North America. It offers a one-of-a-kind, 360-degree view of taxiways and runways laid out in sprawling ribbons. An 8-by-10 paper tacked to a console reads 'Today's forecast,' followed by a big yellow smiley face. It feels to Wilante like this day will be on the light side, but it's hazy. He can barely make out the white roof of the Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons, 10 miles away. As a kid, Wilante cherished his Matchbox airport set and die-cast toy planes.

Now, the veteran air traffic controller is surrounded by the beeping and humming tools of the profession. He's one of more than a dozen men and women controlling the planes — and passengers' safety — each shift. They're the chief guardians of all airspace within 4 miles of the airport, up to 4,000 feet off the ground. No shift here goes as planned. Every day includes five or six emergencies — from minor mechanical problems to in-flight heart attacks to infant births. Controllers here can quickly 'make a hole' in the landing order, pushing a flight to the front while coordinating with paramedics on the runway or at the gate.

At the center of it is supervisor Murray Storm, sporting a headset above his graying mustache as he hands out job assignments. 'What do you have?' Wilante asks. Storm issues Wilante his gig: directing takeoffs on Runway 10/28, Atlanta's newest. Stepping toward a console, Wilante puts on a headset and begins a carefully controlled procedure before taking over the runway. Wilante gets a briefing about which planes are about to depart, where they're going and what commands the pilots have already gotten. After the handoff, the previous controller watches Wilante for two minutes to make sure he understands everything.

Many of the pilots Wilante handles fly in and out of Atlanta frequently. They know his thick New York accent, if not his face. 'There's a familiarity between the pilots and controllers,' Wilante explains. Wilante radios his pilots on the airfield below — setting up for departure, guiding them on the runway and green-lighting each for takeoff.

Wilante times the departures so the planes have a safe distance separating them after takeoff: 3 miles for most airliners, 5 for the larger ones. 'AirTran Flight 382, you're cleared for takeoff.' Less than a minute later, the Boeing 717 is wheels up and headed to Baltimore.

Megan pulls into the FedEx facility amid the howl of aircraft engines and the tart smell of jet fuel. Megan is a plane. An MD-10, to be precise, FedEx Flight 1703 from Indianapolis. Every plane in the company's fleet is named after an employee's child. It's a competitive process – every time FedEx gets a new plane, employees can submit their children's names.

The winner is chosen by raffle. Megan may be distinctively named, but in other respects she's an average member of FedEx's 670-strong fleet.

And the system of unloading the plane is a well-practiced procedure. Even before the engines wind down, a giant lift makes its way up 30 feet to the airplane's cargo door. One by one, giant containers – 'cans' – are rolled from the plane onto the lift, lowered to the ground and placed on a flatbed dolly pulled by a 'tug.' From there the cans are rolled into FedEx's 285,000-square-foot facility, their freight unloaded onto conveyor belts. (The floor is speckled with wheels and convex 'dots' — ball bearings in the floor — making it easier to push around the cans, which can weigh 5,000 pounds.) From just looking, you'd never know the variety of items on board.

It's box after package after cardboard crate, each with an identifying label, heading to destinations all over Georgia. About 20 employees sort packages, load them into another set of containers and move those onto 18-wheel trucks — some headed just to the other side of the airport, others more than 100 miles away. From there, the containers are broken down again, their packages put on the familiar FedEx vans and sent out to offices, homes and businesses. By 5:20, the first trucks holding Megan's freight pull out. His name is Alfonzo Ward Jr., but everyone calls him 'Cowboy.' He's even listed that way in the FedEx directory: Alfonzo Ward Jr. The name comes from his bowlegged stance.

Every time a loaded truck pulls out of the FedEx facility, Cowboy hops in a cab and puts an empty trailer in its place. He does this 30 or 40 times a shift. If backing a trailer into a spot sounds hard, try doing it at a sharp angle in the rain. Cowboy has little forward space to work with, and so far this year Atlanta has gotten more than 50 inches of rain, well above average. But Cowboy knows how to do it; he'll celebrate his 30th anniversary with FedEx in November.

'You have to count on your own expertise in getting the trailers in the dock,' he says. 'As soon as the driver pulls out, we have to get that trailer back in in a timely fashion so they load the next trailer.' One key time is 6:24 a.m. That's when all the freight has to be processed and the sorting lines shut down. Why not 6:25? What difference can one minute make?

A lot, says Kerry Mason, senior manager of ramp operations. After all, overnight packages are promised to arrive by 10:30 a.m. 'Say you got 800 carriers and they all leave a minute later, that's 800 customers who are going to be dissatisfied if they get it there by 10:31 instead of 10:30,' he says. 'That one minute makes a big difference.' At 6:24, the facility gets quiet. The hum of the conveyor belts has stopped.

The chock-chock sound of cans rolling from place to place is diminished. Many employees have left. Of the four flights that landed this morning, only Megan is heading right back out: She's being loaded with cans full of mail.

(Yes, the U.S. Postal Service subcontracts to FedEx.) She takes off for Memphis at 7:30. The rest of the planes will sit on the tarmac until nightfall. That's when trucks will arrive from all over Atlanta full of tomorrow's packages — which will be sorted, loaded onto planes and sent into the air, ready for the whole process to begin again. It's not even 9:30 in the morning and already the sweat is beading up on Scott Lotti's shaved head. Lotti, 40, is a ramp agent for Southwest Airlines, hoisting bags onto a conveyor belt that sends them into the belly of a plane headed for Austin, Texas. Another ramp man in kneepads scrambles inside to stack and secure them.

'It's a game of Tetris every day,' says Lotti, wearing shorts, a gray T-shirt and an orange reflector vest. 'You got to kind of think of it like building a brick wall.' Once a plane pulls up to a gate, Southwest's ramp agents have about 30 minutes to unload and reload it before the plane heads off again — forcing them to work with brisk precision. The best parts of the day are being outdoors.