When he was minutes from boarding his 4:50 p.m. Friday flight from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Orlando, Florida, news of a nationwide ground stop began to pop up on Chuck Shivery’s social media feeds.
Shivery thought of the hundreds of dollars he had paid for a nonrefundable hotel room and a ticket for the Vans Warped Tour in Florida over the weekend. Plus, it was his goal to go to all the Warped Tour venues this year, and the Orlando festival was the last stop.
“I was going to be pretty bummed out if I had to miss it,” Shivery said.
A couple of hours later and without much deliberation, the Lutherville resident and Baltimore County firefighter hopped in his Kia around 7:15 p.m. on Friday and began his 900-mile journey to Camping World Stadium in Orlando.
“I figured just gamble and just start driving,” he said. “I’ll be tired, but at least I’ll be there.”
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By 10 a.m. Saturday, after multiple stops on Interstate 95, three car naps and six cups of coffee, he was about 70 miles from his hotel. The festival started at noon.
“I’m feeling pretty good all in all, can’t complain,” he told The Banner on Saturday.
Although few others may have made a 13-hour, overnight drive to their destinations, thousands of people across the country who had their flights canceled or severely delayed were finding other ways to travel Friday and Saturday.
On Friday night, Amtrak’s booking platform glitched as people flooded the system to book train rides. Around 7 p.m., error messages began to pop up for some users attempting to nab tickets.
W. Kyle Anderson, director of communications for Amtrak, said Friday night that the service was operating normally, “and we are seeing increased demand for travel across our network.”
The system was working normally for users Saturday, but trains in the Northeast Corridor began to sell out, according to the Amtrak app. Available tickets were selling for hundreds of dollars, depending on the route.
Others who couldn’t get train rides said they resorted to buses, including Greyhound, Peter Pan and Megabus. One TikTok user stuck at a Washington, D.C., airport said she bought a ticket to get on the last bus to New York City on Friday night.
‘Nobody wants more airport stress’
Most airlines, including Southwest, American, United and JetBlue, offered some form of rebooking at no extra charge if travelers waited out the flight disruptions.
Katy Nastro, the aviation and travel correspondent for Flighty, a flight-tracking app, said people who didn’t need to hop on a plane this weekend should take advantage of those waivers as soon as possible as disruptions continued.
“It’s so tough to say with certainty that things will be back to normal by tomorrow,” Nastro said, adding that it felt more likely that air travel would stabilize by Monday.
For those who had to fly Saturday or Sunday, Nastro recommended checking whether the plane designated for your flight was delayed on its way to your airport. She did not recommend getting to the airport any earlier than necessary.
“I have been hearing some people do that, and I would advise against it,” she said. “Especially as you have the overflow of passengers looking to get rebooks, so there’s just going to be more people in the airport in general. Nobody wants more airport stress.”
As of Saturday afternoon, flights and cancellations piled up at BWI, with 90 delays and 77 cancellations by the middle of the day, according to FlightAware, a tracking site.
Jonathan Dean, a spokesperson for BWI, said in an email on Saturday that conditions “continue to improve this morning following the nationwide ground stop.”
“The airlines steadily resumed regular operations last night and this morning. Airline ticketing and the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] security checkpoints are moving well,” he said in an email, adding that additional staff was deployed Saturday to assist with the disruptions.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport continued to grapple with effects from the stoppage. Several airlines said they expected to encounter delays and cancellations through the weekend as flights bounced back from the hourslong halt.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was issued after a contractor was doing work to replace a wire at a remote Federal Aviation Administration location, causing issues with the telecommunications system. Duffy blamed many of the problems Friday on the aging infrastructure that air traffic controllers rely on, but he said they were investigating the incident.
“It’s not just old equipment; we have an incredibly old telecommunications system,” Duffy said at a news conference Saturday morning. “We should be able to rely on our air traffic control system, making sure it works.”
Some Warped Tour bands forced to cancel because of travel chaos
Shivery, who found a way around the antiquated air travel technology at the expense of a good night’s rest, had better luck than some of the bands expected to perform on Saturday at Orlando’s Warped Tour.
Kevin Lyman, the founder of Vans Warped Tour, said in a video that he never expected he’d have to deal with a “complete shutdown of airports” in his 32 years of putting on the music festival. Some bands canceled for the weekend and others will perform on Sunday instead, he said.
But Shivery will be there for it all.
“It’s really awesome that I’m going to be able to get there and I’m not going to miss Saturday,” he said. “It’s been a crazy adventure.”
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