A holiday airport presents an intimidating proposition, pretty much regardless of the airport, and pretty much regardless of the holiday. A surplus of tired passengers, quite possibly coming off of long weekends and unprepared to cannonball back into work mode, overloading the already-fragile-seeming air travel systems as they grumble toward their gates. Throw an unexplained emergency evacuation on top of all of that, and you'd got yourself a recipe for unbridled chaos — and also, precisely the situation that unfolded at Newark Airport's Terminal A on Monday night. Update, 9/4: CBS New York reports that the flight attendant involved in Monday night's incident at Newark Airport may have had an issue with her medication for bipolar disorder. [See updates below.]

Lenis Rodrigues, a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told Gothamist on Tuesday morning that "there is no danger to anyone at the airport and the situation is under control." But for a few minutes there, passengers and airport personnel were left wondering if the sudden onset of acute pandemonium was an active shooter, or a bomb threat, or what.

Cristina Centeno tells Gothamist that she was sitting at her gate, waiting on the arrival of her plane to Charlotte, North Carolina, when she heard a loud and unsettling sound, like something heavy falling. "Next thing I know, everyone was running toward my gate exit, saying there was a shooter," she recalled. "We all ran outside onto the runways to get away from our terminal as far as possible," and although police arrived within the minute, Centeno said, "Everyone was in a panic. There were people outside crying. It was terrifying."

Further, Centeno added, "No one really made any announcements," leaving all the displaced passengers to marinate in confusion for the roughly 15 minutes Centeno estimates it took the authorities to clear the area and get everyone back inside the airport.

The seemingly very avoidable situation, according to Rodrigues, materialized around 8:30 p.m., after an Alaskan Airlines flight attendant went up to two men at Gate 30 and started asking them "'bizarre' questions." Rodrigues did not indicate what her motivation for doing this might have been, but said she "became concerned" and "hit an alarm," urging between 150 and 200 passengers to self-evacuate via a ramp outside Gate 37.

Update, 9/4: On Tuesday evening, a report from CBS New York cited "sources" who said the flight attendant would not be charged, because an "issue with her medication" for bipolar disorder led her to believe the two men were "plotting some kind of violence." An Alaska Airlines spokesperson did not comment on the CBS report, but said in a statement: "We sincerely apologize for the experience our guests and other airline passengers had at Newark Monday night. Alaska Airlines values the safety of our guests as our highest priority. We’re conducting a thorough investigation to determine what occurred. In the meantime, the impacted Alaska guests were provided hotel accommodations for the night and rebooked on a flight departing Newark the next morning."

Naturally, the experience rattled those inside Terminal A, who had no idea where any of this were coming from, and instead found themselves out on the tarmac with police sirens blaring all around them. One passenger tweeted that the "absolute chaos" amounted to "the most terrifying few minutes of [her] life."

Meanwhile, Rodrigues said, the two men were identified and questioned by the Port Authority Police Department, which cleared them of any wrongdoing. They were allowed to leave, but the flight attendant's questioning continued late into the night. Rodrigues did not know if she had been released or charged by Tuesday morning, but emphasized that the apparent false alarm did not throw off airport operations. Before boarding their flights, passengers repeated the screening process after re-entering the terminal and, presumably, locating whatever luggage they may have abandoned in their haste to flee the scene.

Centeno said she "waited about an hour to get back through security," before boarding her delayed flight, which should have departed around 9:30 p.m., she said, but ultimately took off around midnight.