COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Texas A&M and Tennessee will play at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, on Saturday as first planned, with kickoff set for 2 p.m. Central, after a national flight ground stop left the visiting Volunteers stuck in Knoxville for much of Friday.
The Vols were preparing to fly to College Station Friday afternoon when the federal ground stop halted its flight. The Federal Aviation Administration said the stop was put in place for safety reasons under what it called extraordinary circumstances, and it lifted the order a little after 8:30 p.m. Eastern.
Once flights resumed, the team went back to McGhee Tyson Airport outside Knoxville, boarded its charter and left for Texas. The Vols left more than eight hours after their original departure time and flew into Easterwood Airport in College Station, touching down just after midnight Eastern time.
Texas A&M said after talks with the Southeastern Conference and Tennessee that the game would go forward on its original schedule. The move kept the matchup from being pushed to another day, as happened with at least one other SEC game affected by the same travel disruption.
Several other college teams made the same late Friday flights after the ground stop ended, including Oregon State, Washington and Colorado State.
For fans heading to Kyle Field, nothing changes about the date or the 2 p.m. kickoff. The Aggies host the Vols in a conference game with both teams having had their road preparations upended by the travel delay on the Tennessee side.
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