Thousands Stranded as FAA Clears Airspace After 4-Hour System Outage
American air travel began recovering on Saturday following a nationwide ground stop that halted domestic departures for more than four hours, marking the longest US flight disruption in 25 years. Airline passengers, flight crews, and commercial carriers faced rolling delays across domestic hubs as regulators worked to clear a backlog of thousands of grounded aircraft.
Telecom Router Overload Triggers Thousands of Weekend Cancellations
The Federal Aviation Administration expected up to 5,000 of Saturday’s 41,000 scheduled domestic flights to be cancelled as airlines repositioned aircraft and crew members following Friday’s blackout. Around 12,000 scheduled flights were unable to take off on Friday before the four-hour ground stop lifted at 8:15 pm Eastern Time. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford confirmed the air traffic control system was operational on Saturday, projecting airline schedules would achieve a full recovery by the end of Sunday ahead of the Thanksgiving travel period.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy stated the outage occurred after a contractor working at a remote location attempted to replace legacy copper wiring with fiber-optic cables on Friday afternoon. A telecommunications router at the site overloaded the central air traffic control system by sending more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, causing intermittent failures across radar feeds and voice communications. Unable to resolve the surge immediately, controllers ordered the nationwide halt. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin confirmed there was no evidence of a cyberattack and that safety had not been compromised during the outage.
The four-hour ground stop represents the longest complete halt of domestic US air traffic since September 2001.
