While most airports around the country on Friday remain in chaos due to the national ground stop that ended at 3:19 p.m. HST, Līhuʻe Airport on Kauaʻi was mostly spared.
Operations at the small airport were pretty calm, with passengers and airline employees reporting limited delays and mostly normal activity during the ground stop that lasted 4 1/2 hours.
The other good news was that the temporary stop of flights from Hawaiʻi to the West Coast due to debris caused by a SpaceX launch have now resumed, the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation said on its Facebook page.
At Līhuʻe Airport, delays on Friday include some Alaska Airlines flights, with passengers facing departures now scheduled up to two hours past their normal time. Other passengers continued through check-in with little indication of major interruptions.
One passenger on a flight to San Francisco said: “I am scared SFO wonʻt take us; I am scared they might reroute us to another airport.”
But he said this about an hour before the ground stop ended.
Others appeared less concerned, continuing with their travel plans while keeping an eye on airline updates.
The airport was so calm that there was no manager on duty in the facility at around 2:30 p.m. on Friday.
Manuel Lopes, an employee at 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay who was preparing to fly to Oʻahu on Southwest Airlines, told Kauaʻi Now that he had heard about the disruption affecting hotel guests traveling to the Los Angeles area.
Lopes said some hotel guests traveling to and from the mainland had been affected. But his flight to Oʻahu, and all interisland flights, were not affected by the ground stop, which was due to what the FAA described as a temporary telecommunications outage.
An Alaska Airlines employee said the airline had seven mainland departures scheduled for Friday, including flights to Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Seattle departure was running approximately two hours behind schedule, while another Seattle flight scheduled for later Friday evening was expected to be delayed by about two and a half hours.
A Portland flight also experienced an approximately one-hour delay, according to the Alaska Airlines employee.
Hawaiian Airlines’ last flight to Los Angeles departed on time around 3 p.m.
