More than 1.5 million air passengers have faced travel disruption after the United States halted departing flights nationwide for more than four hours on Friday, with airlines warning they would take days to recover.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, after a telecommunications outage affected the country's 22 regional air traffic control centres. FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, with 700 flights already cancelled for Saturday.
Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, said about 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart US airports after 4 p.m. Eastern time, and that at least 827 flights had been diverted by 7:05 p.m. on Friday. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it would "take us some time" to restore capacity and that "we're going to have some makeup to do." He acknowledged that tens of thousands of travellers had been stranded, saying he expected operations to be back to normal for the Thanksgiving rush, which begins in less than two weeks.
At Los Angeles airport, passenger Nicholas Erdodi, who had travelled from New Zealand to attend a conference in Chicago, told Al Jazeera he had spent six hours at the airport after being forced off his plane. "The challenge is you cannot ask anyone here what to do," he said. "The lack of information is what bothers me." He had been rebooked, but was unsure whether his next flight would go.
The shutdown also left the sports weekend in chaos. The Associated Press reported that NBA, NHL and college teams were stranded, with NFL teams wondering whether they could travel in time for their games. The Nets were among five NBA teams scheduled to fly on Friday for Saturday games, and there are 14 NHL games set to play on Saturday. The San Jose Sharks were left waiting to fly to Utah, while the Florida Panthers reached St Louis before the stoppage. The Texas Longhorns had boarded their plane before it was grounded. "We are grounded and waiting to see when we can leave," a team spokesman said. If they have to take a bus to Baton Rouge, the trip for Saturday's 6:30 p.m. kickoff would take about seven hours.
Delta Air Lines said it was "safely resuming operations", offering flexible rebooking, and warned that repositioning aircraft and crews would take time. United Airlines said it was resuming a number of Friday night flights. JetBlue plans to resume on Saturday morning. Air Canada said operations would return gradually, with disruption likely on Saturday, and Aeromexico was working to resume operations. In Mexico City, the Benito Juarez International Airport said about 70 flights scheduled for Friday could be affected. In Canada, Toronto Pearson said flights that did not need to cross US airspace were operating as normal and that it had increased staffing to support affected passengers.
The FAA said the ground stop was caused by a telecommunications outage affecting air traffic control systems, and Duffy blamed overloaded network routers and ageing technology. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin ruled out any link to a cyberattack, and Microsoft said it had no indication that the flight stoppage was related to its services. The halt was the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years and only the second since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
