SEATTLE — Snow caused a series of major delays and cancellations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) on Friday.
A ground stop was issued for all flights arriving at SEA on Friday morning due to weather conditions.
Flights departing from SEA were not stopped, according to SEA spokesperson Perry Cooper.
As of 9 p.m., it appears the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted the ground stop early.
According to FlightAware, inbound flights are delayed by about 47 minutes and departure delays have an average of 1 hours 6 minutes.
According to the FAA, the ground stop was first issued for equipment outages at around 8:30 a.m. At 9:11 a.m., the ground stop alert was reissued due to snow and ice.
Cooper told KIRO 7 that the ground stop is a typical action for bad weather and low visibility.
“There have been ground stops at various times this morning for arriving traffic. This is how the air traffic control meters aircraft into SEA. They stop aircraft scheduled to come here before they take off, stopping them on the ground at their origination airport,” says Cooper. “With weather and low visibility, they space out aircraft landings for safety and cannot get as many aircraft into the airport. So, the ground stop helps slow down the traffic to space it out until things get cleared out.”
At 11:30 a.m., the FAA reported that the ground stop would be extended until 1:30 p.m., with a ground delay extended until 10:59 p.m., and an average delay of 62 minutes.
KIRO 7 spoke to one traveler who said he spent almost 8 hours on an aircraft waiting for takeoff, only to be told his flight was cancelled and they would be returning to the gate.
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