SFO passengers scramble to deal with nationwide grounding

Better lines are shorter, but we're inside terminal two right by the United Airlines check-in counter. Take a look behind me. You can see that people are still trying to rebook their canceled flights. Now, an airport duty manager tells me many flights scheduled for tonight will take off either sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning. But definitely, as you said, a long and very frustrating day for many passengers. From the sky deck at San Francisco International Airport we can see multiple United Airlines planes parked at the gates with no signs of movement. Inside the domestic terminals, not much movement either. A virtually empty security line, an unusual sight, but a long line of passengers waiting to rebook their canceled flights on Air Canada. One business traveler tells me it started with delays caused by weather. Then the outage obviously I was upset because I do have like the next flight tomorrow and I have like a pretty tight schedule. So yeah, I was quite worried. But yeah, I was like maybe like in a four or five hours, something's going to get resolved. But at the end of the day, like the flight is canceled. This man says his rescheduled flight back home to Toronto is late Saturday night, but he had plans to fly to Brazil on Saturday for vacation. Many passengers waiting and wondering when they'll be able to get to their destination. We got on the plane and then there was an announcement that it was grounded. And then we just got put on hold and we're just waiting in the terminal since now. One 49er fan headed for Dallas for the matchup with the Cowboys says he heard about the grounding of flights nationwide, but still came to SFO. I already got my flight, my room, everything is already booked out there. So it's like, why? If I got a chance to go tonight, I'd go tonight. Or just go back home and come in the morning. How optimistic are you that it's going to get cleared up? I'm a glass half full type of person, so I'm always optimistic. So if it happens, let's go. If not, hey, it is what it is. It's meant to be. Not to be tonight, go tomorrow. Well, many passengers who live in the Bay Area say they're lucky. They can't get out tonight. They'll just simply go back home and come back tomorrow morning. Now, joining me live right now is SFO Airport Duty Manager Russell Mackey to tell us what's the latest here at SFO. Sure. We've had about 450 cancellations today, along with about the same number of delays. Right now, flights are going out. We've got departures all the way through 3 o'clock in the morning. The biggest thing for the customers is to check with the airline, check the status of your flight before you head out to the airport. How are things looking for tomorrow? You mentioned something about you know some of the numbers of delays. Sure. Right now, we are showing 20 delays and 80 cancellations for tomorrow. Outside of that, if you check with the airline and just double-check the status of your flight before you head on out to the airport. Well, we keep hearing that it takes days to clear up something like this. Do you have any thoughts about when things might get back to normal? Well, with the scheduled rain, also this weekend, we'll be playing catch-up for the majority of the weekend for the customers. So again, always check with your airlines first, right? Oh yeah, that's the best advice. Just double check the flight status before you head out here. Have you ever seen anything like this? This is a nationwide grounding. It's very unusual. This is only the third that I'm aware of. So this is quite rare and it's really unprecedented. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Again, always, always check with your airlines before you head over here to the airport. And I have to say the passengers, everyone I've spoken with, are just taking everything in stride despite having to get to weddings, reunions, baby showers. Everybody's just are in pretty good spirits given what they have gone through.