Published Saturday, September 2, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Even more problems for S.F. airport Computer problems, weather slow air traffic BY CAMILLE MOJICA REY Mercury News

Travelers looking to take advantage of the last long weekend of the summer had both bad weather and communications problems to blame for another frustrating day at San Francisco International Airport.

Friday's rain and low visibility were to blame for wreaking havoc on flight schedules throughout the western part of the nation and delaying flights out of San Francisco by 30 to 90 minutes, said Mike McCarron, an airport spokesman.

At least two groups of passengers found their travel plans suddenly included a bus trip through Silicon Valley.

``We had one aircraft that had to be diverted from San Francisco to San Jose,'' said Jack Walsh, a spokesman for Alaska Airlines. Passengers who landed in San Jose were bused to San Francisco, and those scheduled to leave on the same aircraft made the journey south, Walsh said.

Later, as skies began to clear, Mother Nature had already done damage to an already busy travel day.

``We'll probably be dealing with residual delays for a while,'' McCarron said.

Problems for San Francisco Airport began around 9 a.m. Friday, when all airports west of Denver were put on ``flow control,'' a procedure that requires pilots to get definite arrival times from their destination airports before taking off, McCarron said.

Confirmation of an on-time arrival was not easy to get from San Francisco's airport because the airport was forced to cut landings by half.

Switching to single-stream arrivals -- one plane landing at a time instead of the maximum of two -- is standard procedure at the airport during fog and bad weather. By 5 p.m., the airport was allowing dual approaches.

In addition to weather-induced chaos, some international travelers were feeling the effects of a problem that began Thursday when BART construction workers in San Mateo accidentally cut four cables that connected eight airlines to their main computer systems. The communications outage caused flight delays of 30 minutes to an hour and a half Thursday.

Friday morning, Alitalia, Japan and Lufthansa airlines were still having to check in passengers manually, McCarron said.

By Friday evening, Pacific Bell crews had reconnected 1,500 of the 5,400 damaged lines, including 90 percent of those serving the airport.

Complete restoration of phone service to the airport and other mid-Peninsula customers is expected to be complete by Monday, said Heather Alexander, a spokeswoman for Pacific Bell.

``We will continue splicing lines throughout the night,'' Alexander said

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 03, 2000