Arizona State football’s charter flight to Orlando was delayed on Friday due to a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop affecting airports across the country, Arizona State Sun Devils On SI reported.
The FAA ordered the nationwide ground stop for all airlines due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.
The Sun Devils were scheduled to take off at 3:30 p.m. MST for a four-to-five-hour flight, with an expected landing time of 9:30 p.m. EST in Florida. The delay pushed back the team’s departure to around 9 p.m. local time at the earliest, with an arrival time scheduled for the early morning hours.
Arizona State is one of several college football teams impacted by the ground stop, leaving the November 14 college football schedule in jeopardy.
“There’s numerous college football teams that have yet to fly to their destinations,” ESPN’s Pete Thamel said. “If this continues, it could significantly impact college football tomorrow.”
Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham outlined his travel schedule and plan for UCF earlier in the week, though the flight delay altered the arrival portion of the itinerary. The team planned to maintain its usual routine and stay in its home time zone to manage the cross-country travel.
“[W]e just get there way later,” Dillingham told Arizona State Sun Devils On SI. “So we leave at two, we get in at 8:30. But we’re gonna pretty much stay in our own time zone. So, we’ll bed check at 11, 11:30 sometimes, which is 9:30, 10 here, and then we’ll wake them up at 10 o’clock their time. So we’ll try not to adjust.”
The team typically practices in the morning, which makes an early kickoff demanding for a West Coast squad traveling east.
Dillingham said that the early routine requires a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call for a 9 a.m. start time, compared to an 11 a.m. kickoff against UCF that allows players to wake up at 7 a.m.
“[W]hen you land and it’s dark, and you go to a hotel, you don’t know what time it is, so you may as well just act like it’s eight,” Dillingham said.
“So we’re not doing much adjustment of body clocks. We’re just kind of rolling in and out.”
BREAKING: The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop Friday for all airlines "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." https://t.co/PU3fT4R5QO
The nationwide ground stop disrupted logistics for athletic departments during the busy college football weekend. Safety protocols prioritized by federal regulators superseded travel schedules, leaving teams to monitor rolling updates from aviation authorities. The delayed departure alters preparation timelines for Saturday contests across multiple conferences as programs await clearance to resume flights.