FAA chief says US air travel back to normal by Sunday
The Trump administration blamed Friday's ground stop – meaning no planes can take off – on a botched replacement of old copper wire communication lines.
U.S. air travel is anticipated to resume normal operations on Sunday, following a nationwide ground stop that left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded and disrupted travel globally. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief, Bryan Bedford, attributed the four-hour halt to a technical issue caused by the replacement of old copper wire communication lines with high-speed fiber cables.
About 12,000 flights were canceled on Friday, with over 6,600 additional cancellations reported on Saturday. As of Sunday morning, FlightAware had recorded more than 1,200 canceled flights.
Lisa Beraid, a 48-year-old insurance worker, expressed frustration as she waited for a flight at New York's LaGuardia airport on Saturday morning, noting the overwhelming presence of full gates, planes on taxiways, and passengers in concourses seeking information. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, blamed the ground stop on contractor error or faulty equipment, which led to flooding of other routers in the air traffic control system.
This incident marks only the second time a ground stop had been issued in U.S. airspace since the 9/11 attacks. The FAA lifted the ban at 8:15 PM Eastern Time on Friday, after restoring full functionality at air traffic control facilities. While U.S. flights have resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines rebook passengers and restore services, according to Tim Johnson, consumer director at the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
Despite the chaos, some travelers remained optimistic, such as Pat Curlett, a 62-year-old Ford worker, who stated that they were "stuck here for the next, I don't know, 36 hours." However, concerns about the country's aging infrastructure prompted calls for a $50 billion upgrade and modernization of the air traffic control system from Transportation Secretary Duffy.
Republican Senator Eric Schmitt and New York Governor Kathy Hochul both urged for investigations into the cause of the disruption and emphasized the need to secure the country from cyber threats.
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