The holiday travel season is already one of the busiest times of year for airports.
Severe weather, an internet outage, issues with loading baggage onto flights and a bus fire at a Los Angeles airport further complicated air travel this weekend.
Wet weather temporarily closes Florida airport
Severe rain and flash flooding temporarily closed the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport Monday morning, a tweet from the airport said.
Portions of the airport became inaccessible and flights were not able to take off during the closure, the airport announced.
Flight operations were suspended until about 6:30 a.m., when the airport tweeted that the airport was back up and running but to expect delays arriving to the airport because of issues with roads near the airport and disruptions to some airport services, including shuttle buses.
Internet outage causes long lines in Sacramento
The Sacramento airport lost internet service Saturday night after a car crash damaged AT&T fiber-optic cables, CNN affiliate KCRA reported.
The outage resulted in lengthy flight delays as airport workers had to manually check in passengers and baggage during the busy holiday season, Sacramento International Airport spokeswoman Samantha Mott told KCRA.
Passengers with Southwest, Delta, American and United Airlines were impacted, KCRA reported. Video shot by KCRA showed check-in kiosks at the airport reading “Temporarily Out of Service” during the outage.
At least one passenger decided to change her flight after waiting in line for two and a half hours and only getting about a quarter of the way around, KCRA reported. “It’s like a Disneyland line that goes three rounds around the whole terminal,” Sharon Iwanski told the affiliate.
By Sunday night internet was restored at the airport.
Bus fire snarls LAX traffic
Three empty passenger buses caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport Saturday night, closing lots and creating chaos in the roadways leading to and from the airport, CNN affiliate KABC reported.
LAX Airport tweeted that a “significant fire emergency” at the airport closed a lot and delayed road traffic.
“It was a big fire, they are propane. That was part of the safety reasons why it was very important for us to evacuate the area and render it safe and create a perimeter,” Los Angeles Airport Police Lt. Karla Rodriguez told KABC.
Once the fire was put out, the airport tweeted that traffic surrounding the airport still had heavy backups.
Just a day before the airport warned travelers in a tweet that traffic would “very bad” and told people to consider alternative transit from the airport for the holiday.
Sick calls lead to a baggage pile up at Sea-Tac
At least 1,500 bags were not loaded onto Alaska Airlines flights Saturday after a high number of sick calls left the airline short-staffed for the holidays, Alaska Airlines spokesman Ray Lane told CNN affiliate KOMO.
“Put simply: a severe staffing shortage during a very heavy travel period, as well as difficult weather conditions, unleashed a cascade of problems for us, and — unfairly — for our guests,” a statement from the airline said.
Without the ramp workers to load baggage, luggage quickly piled up and delayed around 40 planes from getting to gates at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport by one to three hours, KOMO reported.
Alaska Airlines will compensate affected passengers and is working to bring in extra employees as the holiday travel season continues this week, Lane told the station.
As of Sunday afternoon, every bag had been sent to its owner, KOMO reported.