More than 2,000 flights were cancelled on Saturday as airlines across the US worked to dig out from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years
WASHINGTON — More than 2,000 flights were cancelled on Saturday as airlines across the US worked to dig out from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, which stranded passengers and forced professional and college sports teams to scramble for alternate transportation.
Trump administration officials said new technology being added to the nation's air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the flight shutdown of more than four hours.
A limited number of domestic flights departed after the stop was lifted around 8:15 pm ET. But the effects could be felt for days, with officials saying the system is likely to be operating normally in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.
The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when another key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours Friday at the Dallas airport for their flight to Columbus, Ohio, before giving up. They were travelling to surprise her daughter's best friend. Instead, she had to settle for phoning the friend through tears in the airport, Brown said.
“She saved up her money to buy her own ticket, and she's planned this whole weekend,” Brown said. “Now we're not sure when we're gonna be able to go.”
Ruth Coles was stuck on her plane for more than five hours after landing at Los Angeles International Airport from Newark, New Jersey. She said the passengers were told they were waiting for a gate to open.
“The pilot keeps saying they are telling him we are next in line,” Coles said.
Thousands of flights delayed and cancelled
At airports across the US, passengers stared at screens showing delays or rushed to find buses or trains to their destinations. Some passed the time by breaking out in song.
Sports teams scheduled to play this weekend adjusted game start times, searched for hotel rooms, rescheduled flights and chartered buses.
Auburn University's football team opted to take a bus to Mississippi State and the Saturday start time was pushed from noon ET to 4:15 pm. Other universities affected by the stoppage included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which did not plan to fly until Saturday morning for its game against Oklahoma.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy encouraged NCAA football teams to reach out to the FAA so the agency can prioritise flights for Saturday games.
More than 2,500 flights were cancelled in the US Saturday and hundreds more were delayed, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
Corbyn Wascher's flight was on the tarmac at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport for four hours Friday on his way home to Moline, Illinois, from a conference in Miami. Everyone was cordial on the American Airlines plane as they talked and stretched their legs and the flight attendants handed out water, pretzels and biscotti snacks, he said.
“The stewardesses were amazing. You could tell that they were pretty stressed out,” said the 37-year-old high school teacher, who took a USD 100 uber to a hotel 25 minutes from the airport after he was unable to find new flights. He was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon flight to Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
Officials say no one was in danger during ground stop
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights were safely landed Friday.
Duffy blamed Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He suggested more disruptions might occur.
“We didn't think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”
Duffy said the problems were not linked to the FAA's new AI-powered system the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky because that isn't connected to Friday's failure.
“This is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that's been deployed did not go down,” Duffy said.
The FAA has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved USD 12.5 billion of funding. Duffy and the White House are pushing for USD 30 billion more to complete the work.
Past problems have been linked to equipment failures
The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, although that disruption was linked to a construction crew cutting a fibre optic line. Aging equipment was also blamed for the brief radar outages last year that disrupted Newark airport.
Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the difference this time is it happened on a nationwide scale that left controllers unable to reliably talk to pilots.
“If you don't have that ability, whether it's because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you've got to stop airplanes on the ground and not put them in the air, where you're going to risk not being able to communicate with them,” said Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot.
Friday's ground stop also was different from the one after 9/11 because planes were not being told to land immediately and pilots likely were able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.