US authorities lift nationwide flight ground stop after 4-hour disruption

Manila, Philippines — Philippine Airlines, the nation's flag carrier, is keeping an eye on its flights to and from the United States following the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) removal of a nationwide ground stop that caused widespread disruption to air travel for several hours on Friday. The airline announced on Saturday that it would continue to monitor its US flights as operations resume to normal.

Passengers are urged to check their flight status via PAL's official communication channels for the most recent information, the airline stated.

The FAA initiated the nationwide ground stop following a communications failure that US officials blamed on the country's aging air traffic control system. This outage left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded, with some passengers compelled to exit airplanes just moments before departure. Nearly 6,000 flights, encompassing some international routes, were canceled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to outdated equipment, including switches, routers, and copper telephone lines utilized by the country's air traffic control system. He labeled the incident a legacy system problem and urged Congress to allocate funds for the modernization of the US air traffic control system.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, on the other hand, stated that there was no indication that the outage was the result of a cyberattack or an AI-related attack. The FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop after approximately four hours, although flight disruptions were anticipated to persist as airlines worked to rectify delays and cancellations stemming from the incident.