{"id":45031,"date":"2025-11-09T07:17:37","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T07:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/45031\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T07:17:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T07:17:37","slug":"sacramento-air-travelers-find-relative-calm-despite-us-flight-disruptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/45031\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento air travelers find relative calm despite US flight disruptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite a wave of flight cancellations rippling across the country<\/a>, Sacramento International Airport remained calm and uncrowded late Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

Inside Terminal A, travelers breezed through ticketing lines that held no more than half a dozen people, and there were no signs of frustration over delays that travelers have displayed elsewhere.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered<\/a> air carriers to ultimately reduce flights by 10% at 40 high traffic airports across the country because of the federal government shutdown and staffing shortages in air traffic control.<\/p>\n

Saturday started with some uncertainty for Sacramento resident Lauren Fong, who said her original flight around noon was canceled, but she was quickly re-booked on a 2:30 p.m. departure to Dallas where she will connect to a plane to Chengdu, China.<\/p>\n

Fong said she didn\u2019t know whether the cancellation was related to the FAA directive.<\/p>\n

She arrived at the airport about three hours ahead of her flight, unwilling to risk missing a much-anticipated visit to the renowned Chengdu Panda Reserve, home to the world\u2019s last population of giant pandas in the wild.<\/p>\n

\"Sacramento<\/p>\n

Sacramento resident Lauren Fong checks in luggage and reviews her boarding passes at Sacramento International Airport on Saturday.<\/p>\n

For Irma Perez, 78, who was returning home to Turlock with her daughter and son after a family trip to Pennsylvania, the day\u2019s flight experience was unexpectedly smooth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of people (at the Atlanta airport), but everything was so well organized,\u201d Perez said. \u201cThey were calling by the letter, so it made it easy. I would hate to be standing in long lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her daughter Elsa Cordova, a project engineer for a construction company, said the family\u2019s Delta flight was delayed about 30 minutes in Atlanta \u2014 \u201cnot a big deal,\u201d she said. The airline\u2019s app alerted her to the delay before they reached the gate.<\/p>\n

Flight tracking website FlightAware<\/a> showed there were 125 flight cancellations at Atlanta\u2019s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, but neither Perez nor Cordova could recall seeing or overhearing any passenger complaints.<\/p>\n

Also arriving on the flight from Atlanta were Gold River residents Andrew and Arlene Garcia. They had just returned from a weeklong vacation in Peru. Like the Perez family, they described their flight\u2019s delay as brief.<\/p>\n

The Delta flight crew made the wait easier: \u201cBefore we landed in Sacramento, they came down the aisle handing out extra snacks. My wife got an apple juice.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a table near the Starbucks in Terminal A, Vacaville resident Elbert Townsell settled in for a long wait before his red-eye flight to Colombia. The retired Army veteran and former sheriff\u2019s deputy said he intentionally arrived early because he feared possible slowdowns later in the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter dropped me off,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s expensive to get here by Uber, so I said, \u2018Bring me early, and I\u2019ll just hang out for a bit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsell, who spends half the year in Cali, Colombia \u2014 the \u201cSalsa Capital of the World\u201d \u2014 said he\u2019s learned to roll with travel uncertainty. \u201cIf my flight gets canceled, I\u2019ll just have my daughter come back and get me,\u201d he said. \u201cTraveling is my new religion. I couldn\u2019t ask for anything more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Concerned<\/p>\n

Concerned that flight cancellations might affect his trip, Vacaville resident Elbert Townsell arrived at Sacramento International Airport almost 12 hours ahead of his flight on Saturday.<\/p>\n

As the nation\u2019s airlines have cut flights, they issued public statements citing the FAA\u2019s directive to cut flights to maintain safe airspace operations. American Airlines said it supports the order, but it urged Congress and the White House to \u201creach an immediate resolution to end the shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delta, meanwhile, said it expects to operate \u201cthe vast majority\u201d of its schedule, including international flights, while minimizing customer disruptions. Both airlines are allowing travelers to change or cancel affected trips without penalty.<\/p>\n

Saturday morning appeared more like a lazy weekday morning at SMF \u2014 plenty of curbside pickup spaces and ticketing agents offering extra attention \u2014 than the frontline of a nationwide transportation crunch.<\/p>\n

Even so, a dozen travelers said they were keeping an eye out for alerts before they headed to the airport. Federal transportation officials on Friday cut 4% of flights at the 40 directly affected airports and were expected to gradually increase that to 10% by late next week, if the government shutdown continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a wave of flight cancellations rippling across the country, Sacramento International Airport remained calm and uncrowded late…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[26009,29699,29700,14284,29697,29702,29698,29703,121,123,122,29701],"class_list":{"0":"post-45031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-air-traffic-control","9":"tag-atlanta-airport","10":"tag-delta-flight","11":"tag-federal-aviation-administration","12":"tag-flight-cancellations","13":"tag-international-flights","14":"tag-irma-perez","15":"tag-lauren-fong","16":"tag-sacramento","17":"tag-sacramento-headlines","18":"tag-sacramento-news","19":"tag-travelers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}