Daniel Bates of Oakland was supposed to be at a family reunion in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Instead, he was in line early Monday morning with hundreds of strangers at San Francisco International Airport. He was waiting to get re-booked onto a flight after spending the night sleeping in a chair.
Bates is just one passenger grounded by a power outage that shut down Delta Airlines for nearly six hours starting just after midnight Pacific Standard Time. The airlines resumed a limited number of flights just after 6 a.m. PST.
Adding insult to injury, Bates has not flown since the 1990s.
“I have to decide, whether to go home and say 'never mind' on the family reunion or wait here for another flight,” he said.