Edmonton flights affected more by fog than U.S. system outage: airport officials

EIA playing catch up after fog Passengers at the Edmonton airport continue to experience delays on Wednesday. Nicole Lampa reports.

Although thousands of U.S. flights were delayed Tuesday morning due to a computer outage, fog continued to have the larger impact at Edmonton International Airport for the second day in a row.

Dense fog in Alberta's capital region caused dozens of delays on Tuesday, as well as more than two dozen cancellations. As of 2 p.m. on Wednesday, 13 flights had been cancelled due to fog that day.

Fog and smog advisories remained in effect Wednesday afternoon, but airport spokesperson Elizabeth Dwernychuk said skies cleared enough to safely resume flying Tuesday afternoon.

"Right now, our actual operations are normal," she told CTV News Edmonton in an interview at 8 a.m. Wednesday. "However, there's a bit of a ripple effect based on obviously yesterday's low-laying fog that caused some cancellations and delays and we'll still be experiencing the effects of that today."

"It's definitely hard," commented Morgan Winterhalt, a Winnipeg resident whose 6:45 a.m. flight home on Wednesday was delayed.

She, her husband and eight-month-old son had been in Edmonton for the baby's second open-heart surgery.

At 7 a.m., the family was sitting at an EIA restaurant waiting to hear from their Children's Hospital Foundation of Manitoba coordinator about the accommodation they'd be offered.

"We're actually kind of the lucky ones that we will have accommodation because of our situation, knowing that a lot of people here won't," Winterhalt acknowledged.

Dwernychuk estimated it could take airlines a day or even two to get back on schedule.

"Hopefully it will be sooner than that," she said.

"We definitely would like people to please check the status of their flight before they come out to the airport, making sure that it's leaving on time, it's not delayed and it's not cancelled."

2 CANCELLATIONS DUE TO OUTAGE IN U.S.

EIA cancelled a total of two flights because of the outage of the U.S.A.'s Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAMs), according to Dwernychuk.

"It's [a system] that provides information to pilots – textual information to pilots – about what's going on in the airspace in which they will be operating," explained John Gradek, a McGill University professor in aviation management. "Thunderstorms or runway shortenings or taxiway shortenings."

An order to ground all American flights was lifted around 7 a.m. MT, at which point the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the U.S. said normal air traffic would resume gradually.

"When something happens somewhere else, in the cog wheel, then that affects everything else. The systems are all so interconnected," Dwernychuk told CTV News Edmonton.

"I sympathize with the Edmonton passengers," Gradek added.

"Edmonton has kind of got stuck in the confluence of a whole bunch of different events that really are not interconnected and you basically have to grin and bear it.

"Flying these days requires a lot of patience. And we don't always know what's going to be the next event that will happen. The only thing I know for sure is that something else will happen."

Wednesday morning, the McGrath family was waiting to see how long their trip to Disneyland would be delayed.

"We spent the night at the airport last night to catch our 7:55 a.m. flight and we found out at 9:30 last night that our flight had been cancelled… Came down to Air Canada and it was kind of crazy to try to rebook us on another flight through Vancouver. That flight got cancelled. They've booked us on another flight," recalled Pamela McGrath.

"So we're hoping that we're able to get there, but it's looking like we're not going to get even close until midnight at least, so that'll be more than 24 hours from where we should have been."

As she and her group of kids set off to get more information, McGrath called back, "Wish us luck!"

The FAA does not yet know what caused the outage. The White House initially said there is no evidence of a cyber attack, but President Joe Biden has directed the transportation department to investigate.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Nicole Lampa and CTVNews.ca