HEBRON, Ky. – Travelers at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport had to deal with varying degrees of flight delays and cancellations on Wednesday, after the Federal Aviation Administration halted domestic departures because of the outage of an alert system.
A CVG official says the airport is monitoring potential ripple effects on air travel.
“I thought it would be a little bit more chaotic than it is, but it’s not the best situation in the world,” said Julia Pomarico, who was trying to make her way home from CVG to New Jersey on Wednesday.
First, she would have to fly south for a layover in Orlando before getting on another plane to Philadelphia. As was the case for people across the country, her trip was going to take longer than she hoped for after the FAA issue.
“I’m probably not getting home until like 10 o’clock tonight,” she said. “It could be worse. Because I wasn’t sure if it would necessarily affect my flight at the time. My flight isn’t until 1:40. I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll be good.’ But then I got a text it was delayed as soon as I got here, and I was like, ‘Great.’”
When the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system, which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards, went down, CVG joined airports across the country that had to put a halt on domestic travel until 9 a.m. ET.
“That’s a pretty significant amount of time,” said CVG Spokesperson Mindy Kershner.
Kershner said she’s been at the airport for seven years, but had never seen anything quite like what happened Wednesday.
“I’ve heard from other aviation experts who have been in the industry much longer, and they’re comparing it to a 9/11 outage,” she said.
As of noon on Wednesday, CVG had about 10 cancellations, 25 arrival delays and 25 departure delays, according to Kershner.
Considering the effects of the delays on airline equipment and crews, there could be more impacts to come, she said.
“Pilots and flight crew, they do time out at some point, and so we’ll see how that impacts the later part of the day,” Kershner said.
Tom Ducrow and his family were heading to Disney World on Wednesday. Ducrow said, with that in mind, it was hard for them to be too upset that their trip was going to take a little longer.
“You always worry about the domino effect of what was going on,” Ducrow said. “We wanted to get here early like they instruct you to do. But we got the text from Frontier that our flight’s going to be delayed by about an hour. But that’s not bad, all things considered, what people are putting up with.”
As for Pomarico, she said she was ready to be home. But until that could happen, she had a long day ahead of her.
“Yeah, I’m kind of just sitting and waiting. My parents are picking me up in Philly. So it might affect them a little bit, because now I’m going to be home super late. But I’m filling the time, kind of just hanging out. Not really doing anything, because there’s not much to do,” she said.
CVG advises travelers to check with their airline website before they even leave for the airport to view their flight status.