San Francisco airport returns to business after nationwide ground stop

On Saturday, flights were once again traveling in and out of San Francisco International Airport after a nationwide ground stop was issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday.  

While the ground stop lasted about four hours, due to the complexity of the issue that caused it, even people who thought they had avoided the problem were being caught up in the backlog.

Despite this, SFO wasn't quite as chaotic the day after the nationwide flight freeze.  

"I'm really surprised that people are taking it more in stride," said traveler Tom Lacy.  "I've only seen about three people really get irate and start yelling and doing that stuff."

Lacy was waiting in a long line to try to arrange an alternate flight to Southern California.  He said when the system shut down, people immediately got on social media to discover the cause of the freeze — a malfunction during an attempted FAA technology upgrade on a busy Friday afternoon.

"We're trying to change things, which is a good thing, okay?  But to change things in a process that affects so many people, you need to make damn sure they're working, or they are capable of handing the workload," Lacy said.

In the same line was Liz Chavez. She spent Saturday desperately trying to find a route to Mexico to attend a friend's wedding in Los Cabos.  

"I mean, the flights are being cancelled repeatedly, like, over and over again, especially to Cabos," she said.  "And it's atrocious.  And I've got to get at least into Mexico and figure it out from there."

Chavez said her new plan was to drive down to the border.  But first, she was waiting in line to ask the airline representative to get her back to Sacramento where her car is parked.

"She said, get an Uber and hopefully they might be able to do something for the receipt reimbursement," said Liz.  "But nothing's confirmed."

SFO Duty Manager Bob Rotiski said one of the biggest problems with recovering from the ground stop was arranging for flight crews.  Federal law prohibits these crews from working more than a prescribed number of hours, so it was difficult to get some of the planes back into the air.  

The airport was trying to look at the bright side of things on Saturday.

"Yesterday, we had a total of 519 arrival and departure cancellations, and today we currently have 198," said Rotiski.  "So, we've seen a great improvement from yesterday's operation."

Planes were once again departing and arriving, but that was causing a problem even for those whose flights weren't affected, like Sonya Conroy, who flew in with friends from a trip to China.

"We actually landed early," Conroy said.  "So, we thought, we're going to be good, right?"

The problem was their luggage. So many people were trying to switch flights that the luggage area was jammed with thousands of bags being pulled off airplanes. 

The line to collect suitcases wrapped clear around the baggage claim area, and some were being told there was a hours-long wait to get through the backlog.

"And we truly do apologize for this long, long line here today," was said in an announcement over the terminal's speaker system.

"Yeah, there's a lot of people in this line, and they probably all want their bags because they're all spending the night here tonight," said Conroy.  "We're going to find a hotel and we've already booked a flight for tomorrow night on a different airline.  And hopefully we get out of here tomorrow night."

That wouldn't work for Chavez, who was determined to get to the wedding.  So, she was going to wait in that line to get her bags — containing her bridesmaid dress — before hitting the road to Mexico.  

"I don't even want to tell her yet about what we went through. but these are some trials and tribulations to make it to a wedding," she said, with a laugh, when asked what the bride-to-be would think about the situation.