Costco Food for Stranded Families at San Jose Airport
Costco food was reportedly delivered to families waiting at San José Mineta International Airport during the FAA ground stop Rudy and Peter Skitterians/Pixabay

Precius Dixon said she bought food at Costco with her own money and took it to families stranded at San José Mineta International Airport (SJC) following a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop on 13 November, according to a video circulating on social media. In the footage, Dixon says she does not work at the airport and decided to help after thinking about mothers and babies affected by the disruption.

The video circulated as thousands of US passengers faced cancellations, delays and overnight waits after a telecommunications problem disrupted air traffic control systems. The FAA reported 12,462 cancellations on Friday, including 9,082 by major airlines. It said not all were directly caused by the ground stop.

What Dixon Said About Helping Families

'I do NOT work at the airport,' Dixon said in the video. She described hearing about the disruption and deciding to go to Costco, a warehouse club retailer, to buy food for passengers waiting at the airport.

'I'm like, I'm sure there's moms up there, what about their babies? So I went to Costco and did what I could. That's it. Do what I could,' she said. The video does not independently establish how much she spent, what food she bought or how many people received it. Her identity and the details of the distribution remain based on the circulating footage.

FAA Ground Stop Halted US Departures

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop at about 3.30pm Eastern Time (ET) on 13 November after legacy equipment became unstable when data flooded its telecommunications network. The agency said the network was receiving about 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. Instability affected 17 of its 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers and spread into several Terminal Radar Approach Controls.

The FAA's initial investigation identified a radar site in Amarillo, Texas, and a radio communications site in El Dorado, Arkansas, as possible sources of the excess data. L3Harris, the agency's network service provider, had been carrying out work at the Arkansas site, including deploying a new router. However, investigators have not established whether the equipment or the installation work caused the failure.

The ground stop was lifted at 8.15pm ET. The agency said approximately 3,500 aircraft landed safely during the disruption and that all passengers aboard those flights arrived safely. It added that there was no indication of a cyberattack or malicious outside actor.

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Bay Area Airports Faced Further Delays

San José Mineta International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport were among the Bay Area airports affected. ABC7 News reported that passengers at SJC remained aboard aircraft for hours before being allowed to deplane and collect their baggage. At the time of its report, nearly two dozen flights in and out of San José had been cancelled.

The disruption also stranded a family travelling from India for a wedding in the South Bay, NBC Bay Area reported. The groom eventually managed to fly out on Saturday afternoon and make it to the wedding, but relatives and other guests remained unable to travel. The wedding had been expected to draw more than 100 people, but only about 20 to 30 attended, the report said.

Airlines Continued Recovery Through Weekend

The ground stop ended on Friday night, but airlines spent the weekend dealing with cancellations, delays and aircraft and crews out of position. The FAA described the recovery as slow and steady. More than 6,600 flights were cancelled on Saturday out of about 41,000 scheduled, according to FlightAware data cited by the Associated Press. The figure reflected cancellations recorded at the time, rather than a final tally.

The FAA said it disabled the functionality of the originating routers and the same function on about 60 similar routers as a precaution. The agency and L3Harris continued investigating the telecommunications failure, with the root cause still undetermined.

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