Why the air travel nightmare isn't over even though the ground stop is lifted

We're back with our breaking news coverage. of a nationwide ground stop today that so fa. has led to the cancellation of thousands. of flights across the country. In the last hour, the FAA has announced that. the ground. stop has been officially lifted. and that is definitely good news. But there are still many, many, many questions about what took place. and the confusion it caused. Confusion that was especially evident. when news of the ground stop spread. throughout air traffic control radio. earlier today. Take a listen. Take a. SW 2179. Just a heads up, we went into a national.

ground stop. all aircraft with update unknown. Are you saying national like Reagan national. or national in the whole country? I crossed all en route facilities are having. communication issues. Hey, I was just wondering if you guys have any update. on the ground effect? Sorry, ground stop. Plot is 283 Victor Charlie. We are where it's going to be at least 8 hours. From what I understand, nobody's going anywhere for. a while. Last I heard the update is not. until hours out right now.

Joining me now is veteran pilot Keith Wolzinger. Keith, I'm so grateful you could be here. with me because I think so many. people watching this, I've been saying at. airports or at homes, people are thinking about traveling. and the Thanksgiving holiday. or their family members. Just take us kind of into the cockpit. and into a plane in moments like this. What makes it harder for pilots? What ability do they have? What should people understand about that? Oh, thanks for having me, Jen. Well, don't have a lot of control.

over a situation like this. We relay what information we get. from our airline, which is, as you can tell, rather limited anyway, and explain the situation to the passengers. Try to call them as much as possible. There's a few things involved. with the whole situation, right? So planes are prevented from departing. So at all the airports, the gates are occupied by. existing. airplanes that are waiting to leave. At the same time, there's planes that are.

airborne that are. headed to their destinations that are. now landing and don't have a gate. available to unload passengers. So the first problem is with the Department. of Transportation and the ground, or I should say the tarmac delay rule. that states that passengers have to be offered. the opportunity to get off airplanes. after a certain amount of time on the ground. And if they don't, the airlines are subject to. a fine. by the Department of Transportation. So when you have planes not able to depart.

and planes that have landed not able to. unload their passengers at a gate, that creates a huge huge bottleneck. On the cruise side, crews are limited for a. duty day of. around 14 hours on domestic flights, which means that if they've been sitting. around an airport for six hours and have.

to go and take a rest period of. between 10 and 12 hours, usually at a hotel, before they're legal to fly again. So that's why when flights are delayed. for an extended period of time, you see the crews getting off the airplanes. and leaving. And sometimes the airlines are nimble enough. that they can replace those crews. with fresh crews that have plenty. of duty time available, sometimes not. And that's a case where sometimes.

flights have to spend an extra night. before they can depart again. This is so helpful because this helps explain. to people why, yes, the ground stop has ended, but it doesn't mean that everything's going to. run smoothly moving forward. because there are limitations in terms. of how long, of course there are, in terms of how long crews can be on the plane. and be working, I should say, in terms of where planes all go. As you've been watching this all unfold today. What do you think, what do you think is the. timeline.

for when this could kind of, when it could feel normal again? Do you have any sense of that or estimate. of that in your experience? Well, on a national scale, not for many, many years. But as we've seen individual airlines. have had computer outages. and glitches that have grounded an entire. airline for some period of time. And as we've seen in the past, it could take up to a couple. of days to rebuild the schedule get. the airplanes and the crews in place to resume. normal operations on a national scale it's.

going to take at least probably a full day. because the airplanes are there the crews are. there and it's just a matter. of organizing the crews the airplanes. and the passengers to get airplanes moving. again so the planes that. that are on the ground somewhere else. on the airport will have to be repositioned. onto the gate so that they can be loaded. and have fresh crews. and have the pastors getting on their way. So, the airlines are doing the best they can.

The crews are doing the best they can, the pilot unions, the flight attendant unions, the mechanics unions, everybody's going to be. working. around the clock to get this back. on track so to speak. One other thing I would say though that I was hoping I. would. hear something tonight from a representative from. the FAA, which we did it. I would have liked to have heard. from the FAA administrator, the chief of the air traffic organization. at the FAA, which oversees air traffic control. But sadly, we didn't see anything.

from any of those representatives. Well, that's really helpful to know. What would information would have been helpful. to pilots directly from the FAA? I mean, there's a lot of questions. out there still, but what information would have been useful? Well, the timeline would have been useful. And as we heard in the air traffic. control transcripts, they didn't know. They gave hours, eight hours, there's no definitive answer. And when you're, let's say we pushed off the. gate. and we're departing in line for takeoff,

you've got fuel. You can only sit out there for too long. before you've burned enough fuel in taxiing, that now you don't have enough fuel left. to complete the flight. So then you have to return to the gate, get more fuel, get back in line for takeoff again. In this case, whatever length of time. people spend out. on the taxi waiting for takeoff was futile, and they had to return to the gate. or some other holding position. on the airport waiting. for the fuel that probably was. not going to come because.

they're not going to be released to depart. at the airport. So that's the main concern. And then we've got hundreds of passengers, hundreds of crews that may need overnight. accommodation. You know, we don't want people. camping out. in the airport overnight, although that's happened in. the past. and we see that, you know, it's not uncommon. We don't usually see crews camping out. in the airport. That may happen in this case. I really couldn't say.

Keith, I'm so grateful you could be here with us. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Of course.