A Chaotic Weekend of Air Travel; Doctors Dislike the Feds’ New Childhood Vaccine Recommendations–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Jan. 5, 2025

Indy Digest: Jan. 5, 2026

The whole mess started around noon on Saturday, when I dropped off the hubby, Garrett, at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. He was heading home to Palm Springs, with a brief layover in San Francisco, after the holidays. Had everything gone to plan, he would have been home in time to do dinner with our friend Bryan, who was picking him up at the airport.

That did not happen. Shortly after I dropped off Garrett, a representative of the Palm Springs International Airport posted on social media:

An FAA air traffic control issue is impacting Southern California airspace today. Departing flights are currently under a ground stop. Aircraft have been able to arrive, though some inbound flights have diverted and delays are expected.

This is not specific to PSP and is affecting multiple SoCal airports. Travelers should check directly with their airline for the latest flight information. Updates will be shared as needed.

Around the time of this announcement, Garrett received a notification that his flight from Reno to SFO was being delayed due to a maintenance issue, meaning he would likely miss his connecting flight. Because of that and the issues at PSP, he decided stay with me in Reno one more night (I planned to stay until today for various reasons—and it was a good call, as his second flight was eventually cancelled.) He went to the gate, talked to the agent and quickly got his flight re-scheduled.

HA HA HA HA. Just kidding! There was no agent at his gate. There were United agents at another gate, but they were overwhelmed with other passengers, so he went downstairs to take care of things at the ticket counter.

The next morning (Sunday/yesterday), I dropped him off at the airport a little after 6 a.m. While he had to argue with the United ticketing agent about baggage fees—he’d already paid them the day before, and they were trying to make him pay again—his experience in Reno was otherwise smooth. His flight to SFO was on time, but shortly after he landed, the Palm Springs International Airport posted this on social media:

Operations at Palm Springs International Airport continue to normalize following yesterday’s SoCal FAA air traffic control disruption.

Arrivals and departures are operating, though delays are still expected today, and possibly through 1/6/26, as the FAA continues to make repairs and airlines work through remaining impacts. Travelers should continue monitoring flight status directly with their airline.

In addition to whatever was happening at PSP—which seemed to only impact Palm Springs, as I couldn’t find news about significant problems at other Southern California airports—SFO was dealing with wind-related delays. Therefore, it was annoying but no surprise when Garrett’s flight to PSP was cancelled. He was re-booked on the United flight scheduled to leave at 7 p.m., and was put on the stand-by list for a late-afternoon flight. As an insurance policy, we booked him a refundable ticket on a late Alaska Airlines flight.

Within minutes of booking the Alaska Airlines ticket, we got a notification that the flight was cancelled. Shortly thereafter, the late-afternoon standby United flight was cancelled. Fortunately, the 7 p.m. flight was still showing as on time.

A little after 6, Garrett received a gate-change and time-change notification: His 7 p.m. flight was all of a sudden delayed until 11:30. He messaged me and schlepped his way to the new gate, in a different concourse. Fortunately, as the flight time approached, he was kept well-informed regarding the status of the flight by United Airlines personnel.

HA HA HA HA. Just kidding! Even though the flight was delayed numerous times, there was virtually no communication at the airport. Many of the updates on the United app made no sense—showing arrival times that were before departure times, for example. There often were no gate agents, and when there were, they made few, if any, announcements. Passengers (and a handful of befuddled flight-crew members) were left to speculate about what was happening as each further-delayed departure time approached—times the customers knew were bullshit, because there was no plane at the gate.

Around 12:40 a.m. this morning, the app updated: His flight was now scheduled to depart at 5:39 p.m. today—17 hours later. Fortunately, there were gate agents at this point, and around 1 a.m., he was re-booked on an 8:15 a.m. flight this morning. He went to a hotel (which United paid for, to their credit), got three hours of sleep, and returned to SFO, where his flight this morning mercifully left on time. He landed at PSP around 9:40 a.m. After two days of insanity, and now a missed day of work, he was finally home.

As for the two checked bags? They showed up about five hours later, on a different flight. While I was slated to fly home this evening, wind at SFO made that unlikely, and I am now supposed to fly home tomorrow, via LAX.

There are two takeaways from this mess.

1. Airlines can do better, and they need to do better. Yeah, weather happens, and so do tech issues, and flights will get delayed and cancelled, of course. But in 2026, there’s no excuse for the lack of communication, the nonsensical app updates, and the unstaffed gate counters. I am not picking on United here; I’ve experienced similar problems on Southwest and American during the last year, and most likely, the only reason I haven’t experienced similar problems on other airlines is because I haven’t taken any of their flights.

The airlines clearly lack the willingness to make changes on their own—and the Trump administration recently scuttled rules proposed by the Biden administration to require airlines to compensate passengers for delays that were within an airline’s control. So if you’re flying, there will often be chaos.

2. As awful as delays and cancellations can be, things can almost always be worse. As awful as Garrett’s Sunday was, at least he didn’t have to spend the majority of the night at the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.

—Jimmy Boegle

From the Independent

More News

• Palm Springs’ mayor is speaking out after the latest series of ICE raids in the Coachella Valley. Our friends at the Palm Springs Post report: “Palm Springs Mayor Naomi Soto issued a public warning Thursday about federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement activity in the city and provided residents with information about their legal rights and available community resources. ‘We do have federal agents in the city currently doing detainments,’ Soto said in a video statement recorded on New Year’s Day, conforming multiple reports from residents who took to social media channels to report concerns. The mayor announced that families who believe a member has been detained can contact the Palm Springs Police Department for assistance retrieving property and vehicles left behind. … She went on to outline specific legal protections available to residents and businesses during federal immigration operations. For example, Soto said, federal agents cannot enter private areas of businesses without a signed judicial order containing the person of interest’s name, and cannot enter any private home without a signed judicial warrant.”

• RFK Jr.’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just significantly cut the number of recommended childhood vaccinations—and doctors are extremely displeased. The Associated Press says: “The change is effective immediately, meaning that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend that all children get vaccinated against 11 diseases. What’s no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high risk, or when doctors recommend them in what’s called ‘shared decision-making.’ Trump administration officials said the overhaul, a move long sought by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., won’t result in families who want the vaccines losing access to them, and said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the decision creates confusion for parents and could increase preventable diseases. States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. While CDC requirements often influence those state regulations, some states have begun creating their own alliances to counter the Trump administration’s guidance on vaccines.”

• Related: The Washington Post assembled an interactive story headlined “U.S. vaccination rates are plunging. Look up where your school stands.” The lede: “Before the pandemic, roughly half of counties had kindergarten vaccination rates high enough to prevent measles outbreaks. After the pandemic, many counties increased their vaccination rates, reaching the recommended level of protection. But far more lost ground, leaving only about a quarter of the counties with herd immunity in kindergartners.” Look up all the schools in the country, including local schools, that reported data.

• Now that the U.S. has invaded Venezuela and arrested Nicolás Maduro, what happens next? An expert, writing for The Conversation, lays out five possible scenarios. Here’s part of No. 2: “A second possibility is that the shock of Maduro’s removal cracks the government’s aura of inevitability and triggers a mass uprising that sweeps Chavismo from power. With the presidency vacant and the security forces demoralized or divided, a broad coalition of opposition parties, civil-society groups and disaffected Chavistas could push for a transitional council, perhaps under Organization of American States or U.N. auspices.”

• And finally … we’ll end with two big investigations by national media outlets showing the depths of corruption in the Trump administration. This is not about politics. This is about provable wrongdoing. First up is an interactive piece from The New York Times regarding the ways in which the president has used his office to enrich himself and those around him. The lede: “Since his return to office, President Trump and his family have engaged in a moneymaking campaign like none in modern American history. It is enriching the family, as well as important officials and business partners. The president’s family and allies are benefiting from their proximity to power, retaining or building stakes in industries that the government oversees and that Mr. Trump’s policies have boosted. And several are negotiating deals with foreign governments, raising questions about the administration’s diplomatic priorities.”

• Second is a Wall Street Journal piece about Trump’s pardons. This is the headline: “Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon: Lobbyists close to Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million.” A subscription is required, but here’s a gift link. Details: “In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted one sentence. He waited until his final day in office to issue around 140 additional acts of clemency. This term, he pardoned more than 1,500 people on his first day alone, and has since granted clemency to a further 87 people and companies. The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.”

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