Tropical Storm Hilary forces hundreds of flight cancellations at Bay Area airports
OAKLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT -- Tropical Storm Hilary created a mess at Bay Area airports causing major flight cancellations and delays at San Jose Mineta International, San Francisco International and Oakland International.
Those three airports have a lot of routes to Southern California and to areas impacted by the storm.
"My flight got canceled today. I was supposed to fly out of San Jose," said Kathryn Jurbala. "But instead I was able to find a flight out of Oakland at 1:35 p.m."
Jurbala found a flight home to Los Angeles on Sunday but she had stressed and scrambled all morning to re-book that flight.
"Pretty lucky. Yeah, I'm happy that I was able to get it. Hopefully it doesn't get canceled, I mean, that would suck," Jurbala said.
She later found out her new flight was delayed.
Ebony Hughes shared the same Southwest flight to LAX. She was trying to make it to L.A. for a Monday work conference.
"Depends on what they want to do. I'll either not go (to the conference) or we'll be sleeping here until they let us figure out something," Hughes said.
The canceled and delayed flights were mostly going in and out of cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Las Vegas.
As of Sunday at 6:30 p.m., Oakland International said it had 80 cancellations, which was 50 percent of all flights on Sunday. It also had 53 flight delays.
San Jose Mineta international reported 81 flight cancellations, which was 24 percent of all flights at that airport. It had 44 delays.
The biggest Bay Area airport, San Francisco International, had 67 cancellations -- only 6 percent of their flights -- but it reported 180 flight delays.
"I rather be safe than try to fly out back home and something happens on the flight. Rather be safe than sorry," said Andrew Lopez, whose SFO flight was canceled.
Despite the added stress of delays and cancellations, many travelers came to the airports with a positive attitude.
"My family is here so if my flight gets canceled, I can just go stay with them but I want to go back (home) to my dog," said Jennifer Fields, whose LAX flight was delayed.
As for Jurbala, she wondered what it would be like once she got home.
"It's weird ... Normally when there's a hurricane, it would go to somewhere else. We don't get rain in Southern California," Jurbala said.