Flight Delays and Cancellations at San Diego Airport: What's Causing the Chaos? (2025)

The runway at the San Diego International Airport was open for takeoff Thursday morning, but flights were still experiencing delays and cancellations the morning after a small jet on the runway forced an hours-long ground stop.

A line of planes sat on the runway Thursday morning for the first departures of the day, but by 8 a.m., the unofficial flight tracking website, FlightAware, had already tallied about 140 delays for the day with 18 cancellations. The check-in line at SAN's Terminal 2 was out the door.

The Federal Aviation Administration said flights were delayed an average of 49 minutes due to airport volume, but low clouds and occasional thunderstorms were also a factor.

The airport's arrivals and departures flight-status webpage was down. Instead, the airport recommended all passengers check with their airlines before arrival.

It was not immediately clear if Thursday's delays were related to Wednesday's incident, when a small jet became stalled on the runway, blocking planes from departing for more than three hours. The jet was taking off around 6 p.m. when the nose gear collapsed, according to Jonathan Heller with the San Diego International Airport.

"The aircraft came to a stop without any injuries to those on board," Heller told NBC 7 Wednesday night. "However, it became disabled on the runway, causing the runway’s temporary closure. All inbound flights are currently being diverted to other airports. We have no further details at this time."

Problems at the airport were exacerbated by San Diego International's lack of runways. SAN is the busiest single-runway airport in the U.S.

Efforts to move the airport to a larger area never got traction and natural and man-made obstacles surround the current location, so adding runways is not possible.

No one was injured in the incident. Airport officials quickly declared a ground stop while crews worked to clear the private jet off the runway.

"Was wondering what’s going on," one user posted to X shortly after the ground stop was declared. "Keep seeing big commercial jets flying over my house diverting, never see them flying directly over."

According to the FAA registry, the Cessna 750 Citation, which has tail number N769XJ, is registered out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

There was little visible movement for hours as the small plane sat on the runway surrounded by emergency vehicles, their lights flashing.

An airport official told NBC 7 around 7 p.m. that they were not sure how long it would take to clear the runway. More than 100 flights were affected by the ground stop. FlightAware tallied 90 cancellations at the airport on Wednesday.

A little before 9 p.m., there was finally movement, and a vehicle was employed to remove the aircraft from the runway. The airport was reopened within a half-hour, an official told NBC 7.