#ground-stop

#ground-stop

The government shutdown has come for your travel plans, and the impacts began to mount Friday with the implementation of a 10% reduction in flight traffic that was ordered this week by the FAA, in order to address low staffing levels among air traffic controllers. At SFO Friday, a ground stop was ordered between 4 am and 8:45 am that delayed a number of incoming flights, which in turn caused delays for departing flights that were waiting on those inbound aircraft.

Tens of thousands of air traffic controllers and TSA agents have been working with reduced pay in what has become the second-longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. At a Friday press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy insisted that the system was still safe but said it was under strain. The stress level that our controllers are under right now, I think, is unacceptable, Duffy said.

A string of disruptive weather conditions has forced a ground delay at San Francisco International Airport on the tail end of the holiday weekend. Beginning at 10:45 a.m. Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration enacted a ground stop at SFO caused by low-ceiling clouds. SFO is "dealing with some southwesterly winds which can be impactful as well, but the ground stop is due to low ceilings, so, with that, we are expecting that to persist," National Weather Service forecaster Dalton Behringer told SFGATE.

'This is a widespread issue affecting multiple departure facilities across the country,' the FAA said, noting that other airports in the network, ranging from ZLA in Los Angeles to ZMP in Minneapolis, are included in the affected routing.