Phoenix Passengers Cope With Canceled Flights

By Stina Sieg
Published: Friday, September 26, 2014 - 2:44pm
Updated: Friday, September 26, 2014 - 3:11pm
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(Photo by Stina Sieg - KJZZ)
Above, passengers queue up at the Southwest Airlines counter at Sky Harbor. Today, about 20 flights to and from the Chicago area were canceled for Phoenix passengers.
(Photo by Stina Sieg - KJZZ)
By early morning, Southwest Airlines had already canceled all its flights to and from the Chicago area until the evening. Above, Southwest employee Karen Reichardt stands ready to direct passengers.

An air control problem has caused nearly 1,500 flights in and out of the Chicago area to be canceled, including more than 20 in Phoenix.

Walk up to the Southwest Airlines agent in Terminal 4, and expect a greeting like this: "If you guys have your boarding passes and not going to Chicago, this way."

If you are going to Chicago, that’s when things get a little more complicated. Authorities say in the early morning hours today, a Federal Aviation Administration contract employee intentionally started a fire at an air control center near Chicago. That halted air traffic in and out of O’Hare, Chicago Midway and Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee. And that left travelers like Hasmukh Patel wondering what to do.

"I’m tied up. I want to go Chicago, and they don’t have any clue here," he said. "There are not any arrangements to go to Chicago. We all pissed off."

And so Patel was trying to find a flight to Indianapolis, where he could rent a car and drive to the Windy City.

Things were going a little better for fellow flyer and private jet pilot Bill Bilger. He was supposed to connect in Chicago, but his company found him a direct flight home to Cleveland on another airline, instead. Bilger will actually get in earlier than expected. Still, he wonders why this one fire affected the FAA so greatly. 

"I’m just a little surprised there isn’t a Plan B, a back-up plan, that they could fall back on," he said, "especially with the things that are going in the world today."

Chicago’s O’Hare is one of the busiest airports in the country - and the world.