LaGuardia Airport runway closed by sinkhole expected to reopen Friday
Repairs continue at LaGuardia Airport after a sinkhole was discovered and forced a runway to close Wednesday, causing days of delays and cancellations amid the Memorial Day weekend travel rush.
Runway 4/22 was supposed to reopen Thursday, but the Port Authority later said it was pushed back to Friday, typically one of the busiest travel days of the season.
At first, the Port Authority announced it expected to complete the repairs by noon Thursday. Then, the timeline was pushed back a few hours later. It was not immediately clear why.
"We fully expect to be able to reopen the runway before flight operations tomorrow," a Port Authority spokesperson said, without giving a specific time.
The agency did not respond to CBS News New York's question about what caused the change.
Sinkhole at LGA discovered Wednesday morning
The sinkhole at LaGuardia was discovered at around 11 a.m. Wednesday during a routine inspection, airport officials said. Runway 4/22, one of that airport's two runways, was immediately shut down.
Sally Marchetto and her family's flight home to St. Louis was delayed and ultimately canceled while the six of them were waiting at the airport.
"We were just sitting at the gate, and a young man came up, and he was like, 'I think they said something about a sinkhole.' And we're like, really?" Marchetto said. "They kept just flipping it back and forth, the times. Departure time at 6:30. Departure time at 7. Departure time at 8. So then they canceled it."
The family decided to stay at an Airbnb in Queens after getting rebooked on separate flights Friday.
"Tomorrow, I'm leaving at 9 a.m., and my 80-year-old parents will have to go at like 2:30," Marchetto said.
Ossining resident Lee Weinberg and his family finally took off for Kansas City on Thursday.
"Delta warned us at 9:30 p.m. last night. They canceled our flight, and, yeah, it was terrible. We lost the whole day," Weinberg said.
Olijuah Williams of Queens, who was heading to Atlanta, wasn't as fortunate.
"My flight has been canceled, you know, so under the circumstances, I'm still trying to keep my spirits up," Williams said.
LGA down a runway during repairs
LaGuardia, which serves mostly domestic travelers, handles about half the air traffic that nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport does. While LGA usually operates two runways, JFK operates four.
With LaGuardia down a runway, that means more congested tarmacs and less wiggle room for arrivals and departures.
There was no word on what caused the sinkhole. Port Authority sources said Wednesday that investigators were looking at many possibilities, including a fuel line tunneling project.
