FORT MYERS, Fla. — We've been at Southwest Florida International Airport all day and people kept telling us how they are facing some sort issue. Delays and cancelations from this morning's FAA issues have affected the entire country that have continued throughout the day. Delays timed from 40 minute to more than 4 hours and some flights cancelled completely.
It's caused quite a bit of a confusion for travelers at RSW because many people I spoke with have connecting flights. They aren't sure they will make or if they'll make their second flight to get home from the next airport.
"It’s put me in a little tizzy because I’m dealing with school and wanting to get to Denver so that we could get on my child's school without missing anything and right now my flight from Fort Myers to Atlanta is on time but my flight from Atlanta to Denver is delayed. I have no idea what’s going to happen and I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay the night in Atlanta," says Cheryl Papasodero.
While other travelers are hoping to make it back in time for work... "I would say probably the biggest concern is making sure we get to work because there’s a big cascade of consequences if we don’t make it back for work tomorrow," says Shirley Kent.
And not only are travelers concerned about making it back in time for work, they are also concerned how connecting flights will pan out.
"Our second flight and layover was canceled so now we just finished talking to American Airlines and they were able to change our flight so now we’re landing in a different city so we can catch another flight to try to get back home — so it seems to be working out but once we arrive in Charlotte, we will just have to check to make sure additional flights are delayed either." And many many others dealing with the same problems like Carla Henke trying to get back to Minnesota, "Well, let’s see, this morning we were at our hotel listening to the news and could hear in the background 'oh the FAA — the computers are down' and it’s like oh boy... it’s gonna be a great day. Luckily we didn’t make any plans for this afternoon or anything like that so we just kind of figured it is a travel day and you just roll with it. Right? That’s all you can do!"
Carla and her husband tell me they've been delayed for hours; then even while we were chatting they got another notification about pushing their flight back another hour, making it a 4 hour delay adding, "I would much rather be delayed going back to the snow and cold in Minnesota then have been delayed coming out to Paradise and being on Marco Island."
A travel alert update came across RSW's website Wednesday morning at 9am stating flights are resuming nationwide and that passengers need to check with their airline for the most up-to-date information concerning flights at RSW.
If you are planning on traveling tonight or tomorrow, please remember to check with your airlines to make sure you are not delayed as we know this has affected flights throughout every airport today.
