SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco 49ers learned of Friday’s nationwide air traffic shutdown during coach Kyle Shanahan‘s news conference, a day before their flight, Calvin Watkins reported on X.
Reporters asked Shanahan whether the team had talked about changing its travel after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights.
“All right. I didn’t know,” Shanahan said Friday after reporters told him the cause was communication issues. “I just first heard, so hopefully.”
Shanahan first responded to the question by asking, “When did they do that?” He later asked, “Why’d they do that?”
The 49ers plan to fly to Dallas at 1 p.m. PT on Saturday for a Sunday game.
“Yes. Yeah, it’ll be a normal walk-through time for us,” Shanahan said when asked about a Saturday morning walk-through. “We’re just going to get there a little bit later.”
Ground Stop Lifted Friday Night
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the ground stop at about 1:15 p.m. PT, citing a communication problem at air route traffic control centers.
Airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday, and officials said a telecommunications outage caused the halt.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said during a Friday night news briefing. “… Our routers actually got overloaded with data and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that there was no indication the outage was a deliberate attack on the country.
“I want to make sure everybody understands that there is no connection between this and Microsoft,” Mullin said during the briefing with Duffy. “I know a lot of people are making that jump.”
More than 10,000 delays and over 4,000 cancellations were listed Friday. The order was the second nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Several NFL Teams Travel Saturday
10 other NFL teams besides the 49ers are scheduled to travel to their road games on Saturday.
The Los Angeles Rams plan to fly to Glendale, Arizona, on Saturday for a 1:05 p.m. PT kickoff Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. The Los Angeles Chargers must travel to face the Baltimore Ravens in a Monday night game.
Duffy said Friday that the airlines would begin moving stranded aircraft on Saturday morning if they could not move them Friday night.
“It’s going to be slow,” Duffy said of the reopened airspace. “So if you’re watching, you’re at an airport, check with your airline.”
The 49ers face the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday at 3:25 p.m. CT. San Francisco has won the last four meetings between the teams, starting with a 2022 playoff victory over Dallas.
Join the conversation