FAA Outage Impacts Travelers In The Valley

Flights here locally, were put on pause this morning, but it wasn’t just one airline this time around. We know at least 20 flights were affected by this outage at Palm Springs International Airport, with fliers from all different parts of the country. "I was supposed to work tomorrow… same here yes. We don’t know where we’re staying when we go to these other locations. You know what is available and what’s not available." says Gloria Small and Marian Smith visiting from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Travelers plans were set back. Gloria Small and Marian Smith were just two of several travelers whose flights were delayed Wednesday morning. They were just trying to get back home to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but their travel day is now stretched a little longer than anticipated. "You know, we’ll just have to go with the flow. We were supposed to get home late tonight like 10 or 10 o’clock or so… and now we’ll get home, around noon tomorrow." These two travelers were not alone. Several other travelers thought the nightmare was over after the holidays and planned accordingly. "Well the whole holiday travel has been a huge inconvenience. Southwest Airlines has been a big problem so we tend to use United more." says Otto Aichinger, traveling back home to Denver, Colorado. Aichinger said he found out the news this morning and did his best to stay on top of any updates that were sent out. "Well, this morning we woke up and found out the FAA had a three hour delay and so we accordingly kept in touch with the United Airlines and went from there." These fliers say their plans were left in limbo, with little to no information given out to when they’d be able to get home. Even after the FAA announced the cause of the travel nightmare being a power outage, worries only mounted over how bad it could get. "A little troublesome thinking that an entire nation’s flight tracking flight notification system could shut down simultaneously." says Bilal Sarwari, while traveling back home to Atlanta, Georgia. When speaking with those travelers, many of them considered themselves to be lucky traveling at a smaller airport rather than a much more populated airport, today.