Thousands of flights cancelled as airlines work to dig out from nationwide ground stop

WASHINGTON (AP) — Airlines across the United States worked to recover from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years that cancelled more than 2,500 flights Saturday, spread ripple effects around the world, stranded passengers and forced pro and college sports teams to scramble for alternate transportation.

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 flight shutdown of more than four hours, Trump administration officials said.

Airports were slowly returning to normal, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said, with planes taking flight and landing.

But the effects could be felt for days, with officials saying the system would likely return to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.

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 September 11, 2001, attacks.

Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, said the stoppage on Friday had affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the US 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.”

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

More than 2,500 flights were canceled in the US Saturday and hundreds more were delayed, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the grounding order landed safely Friday.

Duffy blamed Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He suggested more disruptions might occur.

“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”

Duffy said the failure Friday involved old equipment and was not linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system, which the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.

The problem was due to updating a system that can never shut down, Charlton said.

“What you’re watching here is trying to change the tires of your car when the car’s going at 80 miles an hour down the expressway, because nothing stops in aviation,” Charlton said. “It’s a 24/7 operation. And to make changes on the fly, if you’ll pardon that pun, is incredibly complex and dangerous.”

The FAA has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion of funding.

Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.

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