Almost 400 flights departing from or arriving at SFO have been delayed so far on Thursday, with 55 flights canceled outright — though the majority of the cancelations may be due to the FAA-mandated decrease in air traffic related to the government shutdown.
The shutdown might be over, but air travel impacts continue to be felt across the country Thursday. And at SFO, the FAA's ongoing, mandatory cuts to overall air traffic are running up against a significant storm system that brought strong gusts of wind, adding to air delays.
According to FlightAware, as of this writing, 376 flights into and out of SFO have been delayed today, and 55 flights have been canceled. 27 of those cancellations have been on the regional connector airline SkyWest, and 13 have been from United Airlines. Because at least 46 of those cancellations were announced first thing Thursday morning, they appear likely to be related to the FAA cuts and not the weather.
United has seen the lion's share of today's SFO delays, with 156 total flights delayed.
In addition to the nationwide decrease in air traffic ordered by the FAA as of last Friday, the FAA also was intentionally slowing traffic into SFO Thursday due to weather conditions, and further delays were being caused by the airport needing to switch its runways in use due the direction of the storm's winds.
"When weather like this reduces visibility, the FAA increases the separation between aircraft to keep flying safe. This increased separation causes delays," says SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel in a statement. "This storm is causing high winds from an atypical direction, which forces us to use an atypical pattern for takeoffs and landing, essentially 180 degrees from the normal configuration. This is less efficient and also contributes to delays."
As we discussed last year when a runway construction project was happening at SFO, the airport has four runway paths and eight total departure and takeoff options, depending on how the runway is configured. Prevailing winds around the Bay dictate that the airport only uses half of those for about 95% of the year, except when wind patterns shift as they did today, causing them to use the least familiar configuration. (See more explanation here.)
SFO is encouraging all passengers to either have their airlines apps pushing notifications to them on their phones, or to check online before leaving for the airport for any potential delays.
This story has been updated throughout.
Top image: Photo by Asael Pena
