Abstract:
Airlines are scrambling to relocate passengers and crew more than four hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide grounding. On Sunday, flight delays continued.
"We're just sleeping here," Beth Martin said Sunday at New York's LaGuardia Airport as she prepared to fly home to Birmingham, Alabama. She had just returned from a trip for her daughter's birthday. They had originally booked a flight for Saturday night, but after Delta Air Lines started posting delays, they decided to make the most of the extra time: walking in Central Park and window shopping on Fifth Avenue.
When the flight was eventually canceled, however, the waitlist for alternative flights looked bleak, and the couple was charged $700 for an extra night at their Midtown Manhattan hotel. As a result, mother and daughter spent the night directly at LaGuardia Airport on Saturday night. She said they found a wheelchair to sleep on outside the security area.
According to FlightAware data, as of 7 a.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, more than 1,600 flights have been canceled and nearly 1,400 flights have been delayed across the United States. However, this number is far lower than the nearly 6,700 canceled flights on Saturday, and also less than the more than 9,200 flight cancellations caused by the FAA suspending flights from all airports in the United States on Sunday.
On Saturday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the incident on router failures and efforts to upgrade the system from copper to fiber optics. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the upgrade was part of "routine" maintenance for the switch to fiber optics.
To ease delays, airlines are waiving change fees and fare differences and offering extra pay to pilots and flight attendants.
Some passengers said that they were rebooked on several flights before finally boarding.
Justine Fritz, who works in sales for a consumer products company, attended a business event in New York on Friday. After her flight was canceled on Saturday, she tried five different flights before finally getting on a plane to Houston and had to take a four-hour detour to get back home to Minneapolis. Fritz said she had so many boarding passes that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) initially refused to let her go through security.
"This is absolutely crazy," she said at the gate. Fritz said she tried to make the most of the time by shopping and getting haircuts, but she still felt disappointed.
"I missed the first quarter of the Vikings game," she said.
Martin said the journey home for her and her daughter will become even longer. Delta Air Lines rebooked them to Memphis, and her husband would drive four hours from Birmingham to pick them up.
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