book-tour event

With the busiest travel days of the year just ahead, U.S. airports and federal officials today scrambled to restore flights for tens of thousands of travelers grounded by Friday’s historic suspension of air traffic.

“We are back at full operations,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a Washington D.C. news conference Saturday morning. However, he said, “Games may not happen on time today. People may not get to a wedding. They may not get to a birthday party.”

At LAX at 2:20 p.m., travel website FlightAware reported 85 canceled departures and 110 canceled arrivals, along with 189 delayed departures and 196 delayed arrivals. At Hollywood Burbank Airport, the figures were 12 canceled departures, 11 canceled arrivals, 22 delayed departures and 22 delayed arrivals.

“It’s just going to take some time for things to get back to normal. I don’t have an estimate on that,” said an LAX spokesperson Saturday morning. “The only thing we’re able to recommend is that people check with their airlines before they travel.”

John DiScala, who runs the travel advice website JohnnyJet.com and has a pre-Thanksgiving flight from LAX coming up on Wednesday, said he plans to follow his usual pre-flight routine, which includes having the airline’s app on his phone, having the airline’s number on his phone (in case he needs to rebook in a hurry), checking his seat assignment, showing up at the airport two hours ahead of departure and consulting flighty.com, which tracks airlines, airports and plane locations.

That said, in the absence of another FAA hiccup, “I don’t think there are going to be any problems. The only problems will be if there’s bad weather,” DiScala said. Still, he said, “Be extra kind to TSA, to gate agents and to flight attendants. This is not their mess. They’re just dealing with it like you, and they’re not getting paid any more. That’s why we bring chocolates.”

Nationwide, as of Saturday afternoon, FlightAware reported 5,577 canceled flights within, into or out of the U.S., along with 6,915 delayed flights. Though about 10% of LAX’s departures were canceled Saturday, the airport appeared to be recovering faster than some others. Airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, New York and San Francisco were among those with cancellation rates of 17% or higher.

That slowdown follows several hours of grounded flights Friday, when federal officials said more than 9,000 commercial flights were canceled, forcing tens of thousands of travelers into long waits or overnight stays in major airports across the country. Apart from 9/11, the FAA’s only “nationwide ground stop” order — banning takeoffs until further notice — came in 2023. That order, prompted by problems with the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system, was lifted after about 90 minutes, but affected thousands of flights.

“BAD NEWS: I’m at the airport. GOOD NEWS: I’m in the bar,” Chicago-based poet Patricia Smith wrote on Facebook.

“We’ve landed at LAX. We can’t get a gate because there are no free gates,” said actor Johnny Cannizzaro in an Instagram post. “We’ve got a plane full of cranky passengers…. We have a few crying babies. We have a bit of a nightmare situation going on here.”

“I’ve been stranded at the airport for hours,” author Reyna Grande wrote on Facebook from LAX on Friday. “I may or may not make it out of here tonight for the Texas Book festival tomorrow.” (Two hours later, Grande said she’d miss the festival on Saturday, but was still hoping to be there Sunday.)

Desi Barlett, who lives in Hawaii, was due to fly there from San Diego on Friday, but learned in the “chaotic” San Diego airport that her flight was scrubbed. “It’s a little scary-slash-weird,” she said on Instagram. During the wait, she did exercises and found a massage chair. Later, texting from a Hawaii-bound flight on Saturday, she said, “the whole thing was a mess…Today was much more relaxed.”

For Santa Rosa-based author and cartoonist Stephan Pastis, the mess developed in stages. He was due to fly Alaska Airlines to Spokane for a book-tour event, saw that his flight was canceled and booked an alternative. Then that was canceled, and another.

“They don’t cancel them altogether,” Pastis said via text, still en route to Spokane. “So you have to stay up all night waiting for the alert that your new flight has ALSO been canceled. Nutters.”

Pastis’s event in Spokane was delayed to give him more time to arrive. But the author’s travel challenges are far from over, because he’ll be in transit almost constantly between now and Thanksgiving.

“I have no choice but to endure it,” Pastis said. Nine tour stops in nine days.”

Air travel expert Brian Kelly, also known as The Points Guy, has warned that “it’s going to be a rough weekend at airports. Speaking on Instagram, Kelly said that “it will take days before things are back to ‘normal.’ I highly recommend tracking your flight and opt-in for updates in your airline app.”

One of many events affected by the grounding is Camp Flog Gnaw, a sold-out Saturday-Sunday music festival at Dodger Stadium expected to draw about 50,000 people per day with more than two dozen acts. The gates were set to open at noon Saturday.

“I unfortunately am going to miss the festival because all flights are either canceled or have the longest standbys imaginable,” wrote one Reddit user. “I’m hoping AXS” — the event’s official ticket vendor— “can give some refund back.”

The incident comes as the holiday travel season intensifies. On a typical travel day in mid-November, TSA agents screen roughly 2-2.5 million passengers nationwide. Last year, that figure reached 2.7 million passengers on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and 3.1 million on the Sunday after. As of 9:30 a.m., Friday’s total hadn’t been posted.

At Saturday morning’s news conference in Washington, federal officials said they did not believe cyber-crime or artificial intelligence played any role in Friday’s trouble. Instead, Duffy blamed lagging federal air-traffic technology and pointed to government contractor L3Harris, which owns and operates a communications network crucial to air traffic control. After some communications and radar became unreliable on Friday afternoon, Duffy said, officials traced the trouble to a recently updated communications router.

So far, Duffy said, it’s unclear whether the root problem was human error or a faulty router. Officials said that router was in a “remote” location, but didn’t say where.

When Nan Lehnert of Los Angeles boarded her flight from Burbank to Oakland Saturday morning, “everyone gave a big cheer and applause for the pilots,” she said by text.

Nathan Banks of Portland, who works for TriMet, that city’s public transportation agency, was in San Diego for a conference on transportation scheduling software. When word reached him of the canceled flights, he imagined the transportation professionals trying to sort it out.

“It must be a nightmare,” Banks said.

But for Banks and his wife, Lisa Smillie, it wasn’t so bad. Instead of going to the airport for their scheduled Friday afternoon flight, they rebooked for Saturday on Alaska Airlines, had dinner at a restaurant on Shelter Island and spent the night in a hotel on the water. As of midday, their Saturday afternoon flight was listed as on time.