Three teens from Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tamaqua were among the thousands on hand for the recent ECLA Youth Gathering in New Orleans.

But the trio and their chaperones almost didn’t make it home on time.

Chaperone Brian Lawfer said the group’s direct flight to the Newark airport on July 20 was among the thousands grounded due to the July 19 global IT outage.

“We learned it was canceled ahead of time” and about six hours before scheduled takeoff, he said.

With so many cancellations and delays, he wasn’t sure how he’d get the group home.

“It was one of those things that everybody was on these websites trying to find flights,” Lawfer said. “You’d find one and then you’d pull it up and it would disappear because everybody was getting rescheduled. There were so many cancellations, it was crazy.”

After a few hours of searching, he spotted an available flight.

“We were very fortunate,” Lawfer said. “I was able to find a flight on Spirit (Airlines) that was going into Baltimore. It was pretty much the only direct flight going to anywhere in the area that could fit five people.”

He immediately booked it. The group was in the air around 9:30 a.m.

Since Lawfer’s vehicle was in Newark, he had his wife and son meet the group in Baltimore. He retrieved his vehicle the following day.

“There was no way we were going from Baltimore to Newark” on the day the plane landed, Lawfer said.

The youths, he said, “handled it great.”

While the trip ended with a travel hiccup, Lawfer said the youths enjoyed the conference with 16,000 others.

“In the short time they were there, they did a ton of stuff,” he said.

The gathering included faith formation practices, interactive learning, a day of service and events from the Smoothie King Center.

“They experienced different cultures, and were encouraged to be their true selves,” Lawfer said.

The group also fit in visits to the French Quarter, and tried traditional foods.