Saturday’s airline schedule was already shedding thousands of flights before most passengers woke up. FlightAware listed 3,191 cancellations within, into or out of the United States on its page marked 4:12 a.m. Eastern, hours after Friday’s nationwide departure halt ended.
Its Friday page, retrieved at the same time, showed 9,104 U.S.-related cancellations and 6,998 delays. Saturday had 692 delays. The figures cover different parts of each day and continue changing. They do not establish that Saturday will be worse than Friday or that the FAA outage caused every canceled flight.
Delta explained part of the continuing disruption in its 9 p.m. Friday update. Departures had restarted, the airline said, but restoring its schedule would take time because aircraft and crews needed to be repositioned. Permission to depart had returned before the airline could put its operation back in order.
For travelers, Delta offered changes without an additional fee and advised checking its app or website for current flight status. It said it automatically rebooks passengers after a cancellation and would give as much notice as possible about schedule changes. A rescheduled itinerary can therefore arrive while the airline is still resetting its network.
By Friday night, the consequences had reached college football. Oklahoma’s home game against Ole Miss, scheduled for 3:15 p.m. Central on Saturday, moved to noon Central on Sunday. Oklahoma’s athletics department said Ole Miss had been unable to fly to the game after the FAA stoppage.
The postponement produced a public dispute over who should bear the disruption. Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny said his university strongly objected to the change. He said Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey subsequently told Oklahoma that refusing to play at the directed Sunday time would result in a forfeit. That is Denny’s account of their discussions.
Denny said the move harmed fans who had arranged travel, lodging and personal plans around a Saturday game. Oklahoma’s announcement said television arrangements had not yet been determined. The new kickoff is 1 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, making the change more than a short delay for people who planned a weekend around it.
Auburn’s game at Mississippi State stayed on Saturday but moved from 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Central, or 4:15 p.m. Eastern. Auburn’s announcement attributed the change to travel complications after the ground stop and said the team reached its hotel in Tupelo late Friday. Television information was still to be announced there, too.
Oklahoma said it would provide additional logistics and fan appreciation measures on Saturday. Passengers trying to reach either game must now check both their airline’s revised itinerary and the revised kickoff.
