“Cielito Lindo” is a classic Mexican folk song written in 1882 by Quirino Mendoza y Cortés. The phrase “cielito lindo” translates literally to “lovely little sky” but is used affectionately to mean “sweetheart” or “darling,” famously featuring the uplifting chorus, “Sing and don’t cry (Canta y no llores), because by singing, our hearts grow happy (Porque cantando se alegran)”. It wasn’t such a lovely little sky last night for thousands of travelers across the U.S., including Kim and me. Yesterday was our getaway day from Hawaii, and yes, we knew it was Friday the 13th, but luckily, we are no superstitious. We were scheduled to fly from Honolulu (HNL) to San Francisco (SFO) and then on to San Diego (SAN), which would give us about thirty hours before we went to Tijuana (TIJ) via the Cross-Border XPress (CBX), literally walking across the infamous border wall on a Skybridge to the airport to fly to Mexico City (MEX) for a week with cousin Pete & Nancy to join long-time friends John & Elaine for a week of Mexican rural/urban cultural immersion. I’ve explained already how this back-to-back program came about, but, of course, it all hinged on being able to make a connection back through San Diego work over those 30 hours. Now, for most international travel (and this circumstance is both international and overseas at once), a thirty hour layover is plenty of time for any contingency, but then who thinks of a once in 25 year ground-stoppage of all U.S. flights as part of the crisis scenario array? Not us. We were spending our time thinking about how to transition from “Mahalo!” to “De Nada” or maybe even “Arriba!”. The risk, if any, was getting back to the mainland from the islands, not getting from SFO to SAN.
We had a 2:30pm flight from HNL and our friends Quynh & Gordon were leaving a few hours earlier on a different carrier. They were going back to SAN directly and by virtue of the timing, they acted like the canary in the coal mine for our travels that day. When we got to the airport everything seemed on track, but then we started to get texts. Friends and family were telling us about an FAA-mandated ground stoppage of all flights across the country. Q&G were giving us blow-by-blow accounts of what their folks at Alaskan Airlines were telling them about the prospects of taking off. It started to feel like either the airlines were in denial so as not to see travelers prematurely abandon their travel plans, or they really were seeing less impact on inbound travel from outside the Continental U.S. into the continent. From what we were hearing, there was no shortage of chaos on the ground across the lower 48 to be sure.
Earlier that day the FAA stopped every departure from every U.S. airport (including HNL) for a little over four hours…but with HNL furthest west, that gave them more time to adjust and learn from what was happening on the continent. It was only the second time since 9/11 a nationwide ground stop was ordered. The trigger was communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Those are the “centers” that mostly handle high-altitude en route airspace between airports. Around 3:36 p.m. EST, Transportation Secretary Duffy said, the FAA saw “instability for our radar and communications” involving Air Traffic Control Centers and Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities. Flights waiting to take off had to stay on the ground, while flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations. More than 3,500 flights were airborne when the ground stop was issued, and all landed safely, Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation said. The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m. What caused it is still being unpacked by the FAA. In his fullest explanation so far, given Saturday morning, Duffy said the replacement router began flooding other routers across the air traffic control network with thousands of connection attempts, overwhelming the system. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin added that officials are looking into incompatibilities between that older equipment and newer technology currently being installed. Mullin also said there is no sign of a cyberattack. Where the cause is disputed is that the stop came soon after the FAA implemented changes to the air traffic control system that it said would add the use of AI. Air Space Intelligence, the AI startup supplying the FAA’s new SMART system, said its software didn’t cause the ground stop. DOT is pushing back on claims that the administration’s multibillion-dollar push to modernize air traffic control was responsible. Duffy blames decades-old, analog equipment, and Axios notes he spent much of the press conference pushing Congress for more funding for air traffic control upgrades. Some air traffic controllers “don’t buy” Duffy’s explanation, according to a Washington Examiner reporter. But what no one contests is the effect it all had on travel. More than 10,000 flights have been canceled across Friday and Saturday, and Axios expects the disruption to ripple through the weekend, with travelers stranded and airlines’ planes and crews out of position. To that point, cousin Pete & Nancy have had to cancel their plans to join us in Mexico City due to flight cancelations. We, on the other hand, seem good to go out of CBX on Aeromexico…we’ll see.
For us, the real Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay moment came halfway across the Pacific when we learned that our SFO-SAN flight had been cancelled. My recent Phoenix airport debacle made me immediately recognize that with this much bigger event, there would likely be no flights, hotels, F&B provisions and probably rental cars to be had at SFO. The good news was that while our flight had no WiFi (but it did have texting capability), Q&G’s flight did and Quynh is your basic high-achiever OCD sort who immediately had to solve our problem for us. While Kim and I were discussing out options, which included even a possible $2k (estimated) Uber ride from SFO home, Quynh went and booked us a Hertz one-way car rental. Since we had to get home on Saturday to be able to make it to CBX early Sunday morning, the airline options for a possible flight late on Saturday did not seem very sanguine. So without much of an alternative, Kim and I loaded up with provisions and pillows for the 7-8 hour drive through the night. When we got to Hertz, they gave us the very furthest car on the lot, but it ran and we headed south. I made the drive in 7.5 hours with one one 10-minute stop and got home at 6:30am. Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay, not something I want to do every week. So, today I am getting my Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay aligned for whatever the Mexican travel gods choose to throw at us.