SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Long lines stretched across the San Diego International Airport a day after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for all flights.
Travelers I spoke with said their flights were canceled multiple times, and after hours of waiting, they just want to get home. This was only the third nationwide ground stop since 9/11.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a faulty router might have caused the communications failure that forced the ground stop. He said the outage came when the FAA was updating an aging telecommunications system.
According to the Misery Map, on Friday there were more than 25,000 delays and 9,000 cancellations after the FAA issued the nationwide ground stop. That disruption spilled over into Saturday, with thousands of flights still delayed and canceled.
For some travelers, the chaos meant rebooking again and again.
"We just kept rebooking our flights and then they would cancel and then they'd rebook and cancel. So finally we got our luggage and at like I don't know 6 o'clock last night we had to get a hotel," Tammy Sterken said.
Sterken and her family came to San Diego for her son's Marine Corps graduation, and now they've spent about $1,000 out of pocket trying to get back to Wisconsin.
Even so, she said she isn't upset about the delays.
"And you just can't be mad. The government is keeping us safe," Sterken said.
Shane Meeks and his family are also trying to get home after his son's Marine Corps graduation.
"There's about 4 of us that are missing work," Meeks said.
Meeks said they've had two cancellations.
"We were just trying to get a flight and by the time they got it entered in when they did have available flights, they were gone," Meeks said.
They had to split their family up on different flights just to get back home to Missouri.
"We're just looking forward to getting our son back home. We haven't seen him in three months," Meeks said.
For both families, the multiple delays were a major inconvenience, but the one thing keeping them going is quality time and seeing their Marine graduate.
"My son's worth it," Sterken said.
We reached out to the San Diego International Airport and asked when travelers could expect all flights to get back on track. We'll let you know what they say.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
