US flight chaos continues: Over 2,500 cancellations as services resume

A nationwide ground stop came to an end around 8:15 pm ET on Friday, with some domestic flights beginning to depart from US airports. However, fully restoring air traffic after the longest flight stoppage in 25 years will be a gradual process, authorities cautioned. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stated that airplane departures could resume late Friday evening in Eastern time, and passengers are advised to contact their airlines for updates about their specific flights.

Over 2,500 flights were cancelled in the US on Saturday, with hundreds more experiencing delays, according to FlightAware, a website that monitors flight disruptions. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that getting air traffic back to normal will not happen quickly. International flights are being managed on a case-by-case basis by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

San Francisco airport reported that flights heading across the Pacific Ocean were cleared to leave the airport from Friday evening, including flights to Hawaii and Asia. Europe's aviation agency temporarily suspended US-bound departures from 5 pm Eastern on Friday until midnight, at the request of the FAA.

The reason for the grounding was revealed to be new technology being connected to the nation's air traffic control system, which overloaded older equipment, causing intermittent communications and radar gaps. This led to a four-hour shutdown of flights, according to officials. The ground stop was implemented due to an abundance of caution, with no lives or flights at risk. The Microsoft outage and cyberattacks were unrelated to the stoppage.