The ground stop that impacted flights at the Santa Barbara Airport starting Tuesday has now been lifted.
“There was a communication line that was hit and it affected a lot of things in the region,” said Christopher Hastert, Santa Barbara Airport Director.
According to airport officials, the outage began late Tuesday morning, disrupting communications at the air traffic control tower and causing flights to be delayed or diverted.
“So one of the things that it affects here at Santa Barbara Airport, we have FAA facilities that cover the air traffic control tower, so that's like in the immediate area, planes coming in and out,” Hastert explained. “But unique to Santa Barbara is we also have a TRACON facility, which is an approach and departure control facility, so they're talking to aircraft that are in airspace from northern Ventura County all the way up deep into San Luis Obispo County.”
At the SLO County Airport, flights were impacted for less than an hour on Tuesday due to the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center stepping in to help.
SLO County Airport public information officer, Courtney Pene, said, “Originally, SBP was told that the LA Center (air traffic) would not be able to assume control of our airspace until much later in the day. Shortly after the first press release was sent out, we received the call that the LA Center COULD assume much earlier.”
Hastert says when something breaks or goes wrong, they are notified of systems that will need to go offline.
“When something breaks, we just start to receive word of systems that are going offline,” Hastert said. “And so in this case, I wouldn't say that the FAA and air traffic control system is to blame.”
Many travelers were impacted by the issue, lasting into Wednesday morning.
“Everyone here has been scrambling, trying to figure out options,” said Carly Petrzelka, Seattle resident. “So I've been on the phone looking at like taking Airbus to LAX or maybe renting a car.”
“I'm supposed to be in Chicago tomorrow morning, so for work,” said Mike McHugh, Carpinteria resident. “Yeah, it's definitely an inconvenience.”
Hastert added that they are looking into other methods to avoid this situation in the future.
“We'll definitely be looking into redundant systems to be able to provide backups in the future,” Hastert said.
If you have a flight landing or taking off at the Santa Barbara Airport, you’re encouraged to check directly with your airline for updates on the flight.
