The Arizona State Sun Devils football charter flight to Orlando has been delayed by a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop affecting multiple college athletic teams ahead of the Nov. 14 schedule.
The Arizona State University football team faced an unexpected detour on Friday, November 14, when a nationwide ground stop ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration disrupted travel plans for athletic programs across the country. The Sun Devils were originally scheduled to depart on a charter flight to Orlando at approximately 3:30 p.m. MST, with an expected four-to-five-hour flight time leading to a 9:30 p.m. EST arrival in Florida.
Instead, the FAA’s sweeping order—issued for extraordinary circumstances and safety reasons—pushed back flight schedules nationwide. According to reporting from ABC News, the regulatory action immediately halted all departures, leaving the Sun Devils grounded in Arizona with an estimated departure time pushed back to at least 9 p.m. local time and an arrival expected in the early morning hours.
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
ASU is far from the only program caught in the aviation bottleneck. ESPN Pete Thamel said numerous college football teams are stuck at their home airports, warning that the disruption could affect weekend matchups.
Kenny Dillingham Explains Travel Schedule Changes
Arizona State football coach Kenny Dillingham addressed the shifting itinerary earlier in the week, outlining how the program typically handles cross-country travel when moving from the Mountain Standard Time zone to the Eastern time zone.
“We’re keeping everything the same about the travel. When you’re going across the country. Pretty much, we just get there way later. 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,” Dillingham said.
“When 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. So we’re not doing much adjustment of body clocks. We’re just kind of rolling in and out,” Dillingham said.
Impact on Game Preparation
Preparation routines for West Coast teams traveling east typically account for early morning wake-up calls to match eastern kickoff windows.
“We (usually) practice in the morning. So anytime you’re a morning team, West Coast going east, the earliest you can kick off is at nine, and we practice at nine. So the 9 am. is real, just because you got to wake up at 530 and be ready. But if it’s not a 9 am. kickoff, our time, It’s 11 o’clock (kickoff vs. UCF), waking up at seven. That’s not the end of the world,” Dillingham said.
