Bay Area teams affected by FAA grounding flights: SJSU Spartans turned around on the tarmac
· Yahoo Sports
San Jose State's football team reached the travel equivalent of the 1-yard line, but the Spartans couldn't quite get into the end zone.
Visit afsport.lat for more information.
SJSU's charter flight Friday, bound for Colorado Springs and Saturday's game against Air Force, made it to the runway at San Jose's airport. Then the Federal Aviation Administration's ground stop order abruptly halted air traffic nationwide.
So the plane, with a traveling party of more than 100 football players, coaches and school officials, stopped and waited - and eventually returned to the gate. The Spartans later headed back to their football facility on campus, and now they hope to make the trip early Saturday morning.
Kickoff is scheduled for 4 p.m PST (5 p.m. MST) in Colorado.
"We were on the taxiway, No. 2 for takeoff on one side, and the pilot came on and said they were having computer issues," said Sky Kerstein, SJSU's associate athletics director for communications and broadcasting. "He said it would be a quick deal. I'm a big aviation nerd, so I checked on my phone and realized it was a lot more than that.
"Then the pilot turned off the engines. I listened to air traffic control and heard other pilots saying they wanted to go back to the gate. When that happens, you know it's going to be a long delay."
San Jose State's traveling party hung out on the plane for about two hours, Kerstein said, before re-boarding four buses for the short drive back to campus. The group originally was hoping to resume its trip Friday night, a plan now pushed back to Saturday morning. The FAA lifted its ground stop about 5:30 on Friday evening.
• Cal and Stanford are both playing on the road Saturday, but the Bears and Cardinal traveled Thursday because of their long, cross-country journeys. Cal plays at Virginia and Stanford faces Virginia Tech.
San Jose State players and coaches showed little frustration with their aborted trip, according to Kerstein. They held their customary Friday night meetings - which usually happen at the team hotel - Friday afternoon at the football facility on campus in San Jose.
"People were upbeat on the plane," Kerstein said. "I had CNN on my iPad, so they were asking me what was going on. We're fed very well on these flights, and food makes everybody happy."
• Cal's women's basketball team was scheduled to travel to Santa Barbara by plane Friday, ahead of Saturday's noon game against UCSB. The Bears changed their plans and took a bus instead.
• The Golden State Warriors, meanwhile, narrowly dodged a potentially consequential bullet. After making an appearance at the team's shoot-around in the morning in San Antonio, Stephen Curry managed to jet home back to rehab in the Bay Area - after tearing his oblique in Wednesday night's loss to the Rockets - shortly before the FAA groundings began Friday.
The rest of the Warriors' healthy players, meanwhile, are currently scheduled to fly to New Orleans on Saturday morning for a Monday night game against the Pelicans, as head coach Steve Kerr said Friday evening.
"We have no idea how that'll affect us tomorrow," Kerr said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates on other pro and college teams that may or may not be affected.
Subscribe
There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at Bay Area teams affected by FAA grounding flights: SJSU Spartans turned around on the tarmac.