Flights resume after nationwide FAA ground stop

Flights resumed across the United States after a telecommunications failure prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to halt takeoffs nationwide for nearly five hours Friday. The ground stop ended that evening, but thousands of cancellations and delays continued Saturday as airlines worked to reposition planes and crews.

“We are back at full operations,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a Saturday news conference. He said planes were taking off and it was safe to fly, while warning that passengers would still face disruptions as carriers rebuilt their schedules.

The FAA ordered the ground stop at 3:36 p.m. EST Friday, when approximately 3,500 flights were in the air, according to CBS News. Duffy said officials took the step “out of an abundance of caution.” All airborne planes landed safely. The order was lifted around 8:20 p.m. EST.

FlightAware recorded about 9,159 cancellations and 7,190 delays Friday, CBS News reported. On Saturday, more than 3,800 flights were canceled and around 2,000 were delayed, according to figures cited by the network. NPR reported that millions of passengers were stranded by the disruption.

Investigators were still determining precisely what failed. Duffy said Friday that old air traffic control equipment had been overwhelmed by data, disrupting communications and radar. “What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” he said.

At Saturday’s briefing, Duffy offered a more detailed account of the preliminary investigation. According to CBS News, he said an L3 Harris contractor at a remote FAA location was replacing a router while switching old copper wire to fiber. The router being switched began flooding other routers with data, overloading the system. The FAA was examining whether human error or a faulty router caused the problem, he said. Senior government sources told CBS News the issue involved Cisco 600 series routers manufactured between 2001 and 2006.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday there was no indication of a cyberattack, though he did not rule one out entirely. He also said the outage was unrelated to a Microsoft outage that had affected Outlook and other services the previous day, NPR reported. Duffy said Saturday he did not believe a cyberattack was responsible.

Duffy called for more funding to modernize air traffic control equipment. He said a $12.5 billion down payment secured by President Donald Trump was not enough; the administration raised its funding request to $50 billion late Friday, according to CBS News.

The shutdown was the first nationwide ground stop since a key FAA computer system malfunctioned in January 2023. Before that, the last occurred on September 11, 2001. NPR reported that Friday’s stoppage appeared to be the longest nationwide ground stop since then.

Duffy urged travelers to check with their airlines before going to the airport. Delta said it was offering flexible rebooking as it restored operations, while American Airlines warned that additional delays and cancellations would continue Saturday. Duffy thanked pilots, airline employees, controllers and passengers for their response and patience.