Storm disrupts air travel as drivers navigate heavy traffic, flooding

Poor visibility from the winter storm in Hawaii caused the redirection of some flights and grounded interisland flights for about an hour earlier today, and some drivers are dealing with flooding, downed trees and power outages that are affecting signals.

“Today because of the storm, which is a lot better than we expected, there’s been a lot of issues that we’ve been dealing with, especially on the airport side, ” said Hawaii Department of Transportation director Ed Sniffen.

“Everybody’s been seeing flights impacted by visibility, especially in Honolulu airport. There have been a number of flights that were redirected to the neighbor islands to land in those different areas to fuel up again before they came back into Honolulu. There was a ground stop that occurred about 12 :3o p.m that held any flights from taking off because of visibility that was pushed out by the tower.”

Sniffen said the interisland ground stop ended about 1 :30 p.m.

“It’s been released. Things are moving again. But I think the big message to the public is that there are still going to be delays for their flight, ” Sniffen said. “In addition to the flights coming in later airlines have to deal with where their crews are what kind of time frames that their crews started on and how much time that they have left so in some cases flights will have to be delayed until they can bring in new crews to take on the flight.”

He said there were power issues at Lihue Aiport and at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, where a lightning strike triggered a fire alarm. Sniffen said staff also has been taking care of terminal leaks.

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“At Honolulu airport we’ve addressed everything our power is up and back running solid. We’ve addressed the issues that came with those lightning strikes, ” Sniffen said. “On Kauai, we have our generator running full-time now and making sure that we have power out there. We still don’t have grid power on Kauai yet – we are working with KIUC now to get that back.”

Sniffen advised travelers to check in with their carriers to get updated flight schedules before heading to the airports.

He said HIDOT is dealing with power outages on Kauai and Maui that are affecting some of the signals.

“On the highway side, we have been dealing with downed trees in different areas the typical locations like Pali Highway and Hana Highway, ” Sniffen said. “Nimitz Highway on Oahu, Waikane was flooded a little while, but it’s in better condition now. These are all situations because of the storm, but much better we thought it was going to be.”

Sniffen said so far there have not been any impacts to state harbors, and “imports and exports are still running. We’re operating business as usual.”

He said he expects afternoon drive times to take longer.

“If people can leave now while the weather is still in pretty good condition that would be great so you don’t have to rush trying to get home, ” Sniffen said. “If you cannot, don’t worry about it. The last thing that I would want is for anyone to jump on the road now and try to rush to beat the weather. The best thing for everybody is to make sure that they are on the road if they need to be and to take their time. Be aware and be as safe as possible.”

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