More than 600 flights on 17 airlines fly in and out of Lindbergh Field on a daily basis.
With those planes being grounded in the wake of the recent attack on this country, the airport and individual airlines are expected to have lost millions of dollars after just one day of closures.
All flights were canceled at Lindbergh Field Tuesday and Wednesday pending permission from the Federal Aviation Administration. Even when the planes were allowed to fly, it was under limited operations, said a spokesperson for the San Diego Unified Port District, which operates the airport. “The loss will be hundreds of millions of dollars because nothing like this has ever occurred before,” said Rita Vandergaw, a Port District spokeswoman.
Vandergaw said in her 20 years in the industry, including time working for airlines, she has seen nothing this drastic.
“The closest thing was in 1981 during the air traffic control strike and there were grounded aircraft all over the country,” she said. Still, she said, airlines were able to fly.
The FAA grounded air traffic across the country after terrorist attacks at New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
Airlines are expected to lose millions from refunding tickets for canceled flights and possibly those people too afraid to fly once air traffic resumes, according to local travel experts.
“To sit on the ground for more than a 24-hour period will be devastating for airlines,” said Richard Meyerson, president of Traveltrust Corp. in Encinitas.
Agencies Take A Hit
The losses to the airlines were also expected to trickle down to travel agencies.
Meyerson said the phones at his agency were constantly ringing with customers calling to cancel and change flight schedules and seek alternate travel.
“There is pretty much a variety of things going on,” Meyerson said. “We will certainly lose some money and we are prepared for that to happen, but I’m not focusing on that now.”
Traveltrust caters primarily to business travelers, with corporate travel making up 85 percent of its business. Meyerson said the agency has received some unique requests from local businesspeople stuck across the country.
“We had a guy call from Norfolk, Va., and one of our agents is booking him hotel rooms in Nashville, St. Louis and Denver. He’s going to rent a car and drive across country.”
Meyerson said the rental car business is one that’s expected to be busy making money because of the flight dilemma. But, he said, the action of one rental car company, which he declined to name, is nothing short of corporate looting.
One man stuck in Raleigh, N.C., wanted to rent a car to drive back to San Diego, but the rental car agency tried to charge him a $1,000 drop-off fee , a fee that is typically $150.
“That’s taking advantage of a very tragic situation,” Meyerson said. “This tragic incident makes you question mankind anyway, and this makes you question it even more.”
Again, showing how different companies reacted to the situation, Meyerson said another rental car company waived its drop-off fee.
Air Cargo Affected
Aside from the travel agency sector, postal carriers, two of which, UPS and FedEx, rely heavily on Lindbergh Field, were affected by the delay.
UPS delivers 2 million packages daily across the nation on more than 1,300 flights.
Mark Giuffre, a UPS spokesman from its headquarters in Louisville, Ky., said the company didn’t know how many flights flew in and out of Lindbergh Field daily.
He said it implemented a contingency plan to move packages by tractor-trailer until flights were allowed to resume.
Giuffre said it was too early to determine any financial implications.
“There is no way to determine that until we know what will happen with our network and what we’re going to do.”
A spokesman for FedEx, based in Memphis, Tenn., said there are two flights a day into San Diego, both of which landed Tuesday before the ordered grounding. Those packages were distributed on trucks.
“We are expecting some severe disruptions in some parts of the country,” said Ed Coleman of FedEx. “When we can’t fly, we will truck those packages.”
