Morning Fog Stacks Them Up at John Wayne Airport : Weather: Flights were stymied as the thick blanket reduced visibility to near zero. Santa Ana winds and warmer temperatures will clear things up for the weekend.

Early morning fog put a lid on air travel at John Wayne Airport Friday, touching off delays on several dozen flights and sending some passengers scrambling to make new travel plans.

“Now I’ve got to run my butt off to make it,” said Charlie Jones, a Toyota employee from Atlanta, as he jogged to catch a taxi to Los Angeles International Airport because his commuter flight was delayed. “I just want to get home.”

Other passengers arriving for flights long after the fog had burned off had to wait while the airlines tried to get back on schedule.

Steve Burback, a meteorologist for WeatherData, which provides weather analysis for the Times, said the fog was the result of a high-pressure system over Orange County, trapping clouds low to the ground. There was also an absence of northeasterly winds to blow the system offshore, he said.

Burback added that Santa Ana winds are expected this weekend, which will keep the fog away and the temperatures warm.

The heavy fog reduced visibility to zero early Friday morning at the airport, before dissipating enough for the control tower to begin clearing flights for takeoff shortly after 8 a.m., airport officials said.

“It fogged in flights for an hour and a half,” said Jon Ross, assistant supervisor of air control. “Fog is rare here, but it doesn’t cause as many problems for us as it does at other airports simply because we have fewer flights.”

Ross said 21 flights were delayed either in departing or arriving because of the fog. That in turn set off further delays throughout the morning for other planes waiting to use the same gates as the delayed flights.

No flights could land until just after 8 a.m., when the visibility reached the minimum half-a-mile standard. Airport officials said most flights due to arrive in Orange County Friday morning from surrounding airports had to delay their departures until then.

“But by 8:45 we were back on schedule and all the delayed flights had taken off,” Ross said.

While the fog problem eased early, airline employees spent the whole morning accommodating put-out passengers.

“The fog affected things here big time,” said Jeff Keller, a station manager for Skywest Airlines, which runs numerous commuter flights in California. “But we will get people there somehow.”

Skywest canceled only one flight Friday, but another outgoing flight was delayed almost two hours. In such situations, Keller said, the airline sometimes resorts to sending passengers like Jones on taxis or buses to their destinations.

“It doesn’t happen that often (in Orange County), but we get good at shuffling people,” he said.

Most late-morning departures were running only about 20 minutes behind schedule and most passengers did not seem to mind the wait.

“This won’t kink our plans just as long as there isn’t any more of a delay,” said one passenger waiting to go to the Bay Area.