Hawaii flights resume after national ground stop

The flow of passengers through Daniel K. Inouye International Airport appeared normal Saturday, the day after a rare nationwide ground stop halted or delayed thousands of flights across the country.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s national ground stop lasted nearly five hours in most locations — from just before 11 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m. Friday — creating pandemonium for passengers expecting to catch their flights. Federal officials blamed the crisis on a series of communications failures across the facilities that manage the national air space.

But about two hours before the nationwide ground stop was lifted, San Francisco International Airport said that Pacific-bound flights, including to Hawaii and Asia, had been cleared for departure, the New York Times reported. Travelers were still facing delays and cancellations Saturday, but Hawaii flights were not impacted as heavily as others.

The Alaska Air Group said Saturday that Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines were continuing to work on resuming normal operations following the ground stop, which impacted all airlines.

“Alaska Air Group has canceled more than 400 flights since the ground stop began, affecting the travel plans of nearly 37,000 of our guests,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement Saturday. “Those cancellations, along with diversions, have put many of our aircraft and crews out of position. It will take time for our operations to get back on track through the weekend.”

Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Tara Shimooka said only four Hawaiian Airlines flights were canceled.

Neighbor island and international flights to and from Hawaii were not impacted, she wrote in an email, and all affected guests were accommodated on other flights.

Passengers should still check on their flight status before heading to the airport, at alaskaair.com and hawaiianairlines.com or via the mobile app. A flexible travel policy is in place for those whose flights were impacted by the ground stop.

“We got lucky,” said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Shelly Kunishige. “A lot of the incoming flights were already in the air, so I believe we had maybe a handful of people that stayed overnight.”

In addition to the ground stop, which the FAA later said was due to an upgrade that caused a router to malfunction, impacting multiple air route traffic control centers, a temporary pause for Space X debris was issued just before 2 p.m. Friday, which impacted flights between Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.

That was after the Hawai’i Tourism Authority issued an alert saying that West Coast flights to Hawaii were continuing, according to a 1 p.m. update from Alaska and Hawaiian airlines.

The space debris pause was lifted at about 3:45 p.m. Friday.

United Airlines said in a statement that most flights this weekend are operating normally as it works to restore its schedule. Some flights, however, will “continue to be delayed or canceled as we position aircraft and crews following yesterday’s prolonged FAA ground stop,” United said.

The airline is offering a travel waiver allowing customers to change their travel plans over the weekend.

Passengers at the Honolulu airport Saturday morning appeared to be checking in for departing flights and arriving without major issues. The flight boards showed only a handful of delays to destinations such as Los Angeles, Tokyo and Seoul.

Honolulu resident Kate Thompson was on her way to catch a flight to Tahiti on Alaska Airlines with a friend. She said a group was meeting up in Tahiti from various destinations, and while her own flight was not affected, a friend from Boise, Idaho, was unable to catch his flight to San Francisco Friday in order to make a flight to Papeete.

She spent two hours on the phone dealing with logistics, and as a result did not get much sleep the night before. Her friend will arrive in Tahiti two days later than originally planned.

Aviation consultant Peter Forman said it is very unusual for the FAA to issue a national ground stop. The last occurred in January 2023 after the failure of a pilot communication system, and before that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

It is a reminder, he said, of how urgent it is to upgrade the U.S. air traffic control system.

“It’s a big deal, and it really messed up the air transport system,” Forman said. “First of all, they’ve got to get the system working. Once it’s working, you have to get people flying again, and everybody can’t take off at the same time.”

However, he said it was good to see that Hawaii to West Coast flights were given priority.

“Hawaii probably felt it lighter than other states,” he said.

Dan Bubb, a former commercial pilot and an aviation history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the New York Times that air traffic over the open ocean is less congested compared with that of the contiguous United States.

Also, air traffic control centers handling air traffic headed to Hawaii or Asia are outside the contiguous United States, and therefore could avoid long delays from the ground stop. At a certain altitude, he said, a pilot could swap communications with California controllers for those in Hawaii or Alaska, he added.

Nick Daniels, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told the New York Times that for planes traveling such a large distance over oceanic airspace, “they have process procedures, different standards of separations, than what we do to run the volume of air traffic” in the lower 48 states.

Areas like Alaska, Guam and Hawaii are far enough removed that they can remain stable even as systems are affected in the contiguous United States, Daniels said.

“If they would have seen any kind of risk in the system there as well, then they would have reacted the same to reduce the capacity,” he added.

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The New York Times contributed to this report.