U.S. air travel schedule should recover from ground stop by the end of Sunday, FAA says

Airlines canceled thousands of flights across the U.S. on Saturday as they worked to recover from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years that left passengers scrambling for seats and disrupted travel around the world.

The U.S. air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday, Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said Saturday. He said airlines “will still have delays and cancellations” Saturday but promised that the “worst is behind us.”

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 ground stop that lasted more than four hours Friday, Trump administration officials said.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said a contractor had been working on replacing a section of the system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire, and that work somehow caused the system overload. Duffy said officials were investigating whether contractor “incompetence” or a faulty router was the cause.

“Our contractor didn’t meet the moment,” Duffy said.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when another key Federal Aviation Administration computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In a moment that perhaps only further underscored the Transportation Department’s struggling systems, Duffy’s news conference Saturday morning began with audio troubles that forced last-minute microphone swaps.

Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, said Friday’s stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S. each day.

“The knock-on effect of that is incredible,” said Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy. “The aircraft doesn’t just fly from A to B and back to B and then stop. It then moves onto C and then over to E and around and around and around. It is, of course, exacerbated if you’re talking about long-haul flights, international flights over the Atlantic or over the Pacific.”

Thousands of flights delayed and canceled

At airports, passengers stared at screens showing delays or rushed to find buses or trains to their destinations.

Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours Friday at the Dallas airport for a flight to Columbus, Ohio, before giving up. They were traveling 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.”

A cheerful Southwest Airlines gate agent greeted passengers at Dallas Love Field at dawn Saturday with, “Good morning, good morning,” then repeatedly said all flights were full and asked passengers to have boarding passes ready to expedite the process and help keep flights moving.

Sports teams scheduled to play this weekend adjusted game start times, searched for hotel rooms, rescheduled flights and chartered buses. No. 19 Mississippi’s game at Oklahoma was delayed a full day to Sunday.

FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, said more than 4,100 flights had been canceled. Cirium, a similar site, put that number above 3,200 flights.

Corbyn Wascher’s flight was on the tarmac at the Charlotte, N.C., airport for four hours Friday on his way home to Moline, Illinois, from a conference in Miami. The 37-year-old high school teacher paid $100 to take an Uber to a hotel 25 minutes from the airport after he was unable to find a flight until Saturday afternoon to Chicago.

At London’s Heathrow Airport, several flights to and from the U.S. were listed as delayed or canceled Saturday.

“While U.S. flights have resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines work to rebook affected passengers and get all services back to normal,” said Tim Johnson, consumer director at the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority.