It’s been a hectic weekend for airline travel after apparent equipment issues resulted in a nationwide ground stop on Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did lift the order after four hours, but the resulting chaos was thousands of canceled and rescheduled flights, which continued into Saturday. Luckily, while college sports were significantly impacted by the sudden travel issues, the Seattle Seahawks were able to head to Las Vegas to take on the Raiders as originally scheduled.
It sure helps to have a charter flight in this scenario.
For shorter trips like Seattle to Las Vegas, the Seahawks will typically travel on a Saturday, whereas cross-country trips like their Week 3 loss to the Washington Commanders have involved Friday departures. The NFL is probably fortunate that not a single Week 10 Sunday matchup has a Pacific Time Zone team playing in the Eastern Time Zone (or vice versa).
College football and basketball games were rescheduled throughout the country as a result of Friday’s outage, with the Washington Huskies men’s basketball matchup with Utah postponed outright to December due to additional travel problems. Huskies football did fly to Michigan on Friday night but still had their kickoff against Michigan State moved back by an hour.
The NFL didn’t come away from the travel nightmare unscathed, as several games will have makeshift officiating crews. Side judge Don Willard will be the head referee for the Miami Dolphins and Indianapolis Colts at 10 am PT, then drive to Cincinnati to ref the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday Night Football at 5:20 pm PT.
Unfortunately, some fans hoping to go to Vegas for a weekend to catch some Seahawks football had their dreams dashed, as we documented on Friday.
