US flights began departing again Friday night after a nationwide FAA ground stop, but disruption continued for passengers into Saturday, November 14. CNN reported that FlightAware counted more than 15,000 flights delayed or canceled Friday, with about 3,000 more expected to face disruption Saturday.
Departures restarted at 8:15 p.m. ET after the restriction had lasted more than four hours. Thousands of passengers faced overnight waits on terminal floors or in lengthy lines while airlines worked to reconnect aircraft, travelers, baggage and crews displaced by the shutdown.
Overloaded Equipment Halted Departures
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed aging communications equipment, saying routers handling air traffic control data became overloaded and produced conflicting readings. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said technology added by the FAA had overwhelmed the older infrastructure into which it was being introduced.
The FAA said the failure affected its Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which oversee aircraft traveling at high altitudes across the country. More than 3,500 aircraft were already airborne when officials imposed the departure restriction Friday afternoon. The order required aircraft on the ground to stay there instead of taking off.
Duffy said officials had found no evidence of a cyberattack, while Mullin said the incident involved neither a threat against the US nor a connection to the Microsoft outage earlier that week. Duffy and Mullin did not identify the precise trigger for the communications problems during their Friday evening briefing.
Stranded Passengers and Canceled Transatlantic Flights
Airports exhausted their available gates and parking space on the tarmac as aircraft accumulated during the stoppage. At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Regina Harling told NPR she had waited hours beyond her scheduled departure before discovering the nationwide grounding through news on her phone. She was trying to reach San Diego because of a family emergency.
Saturday departures to the US were also affected at airports in Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Cancellations included an American Airlines service from Paris to Dallas-Fort Worth and Frankfurt departures for Atlanta and Detroit. A Frankfurt departure for Chicago was running almost an hour late, while a service to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport appeared to be operating.
Passengers booked on a canceled Amsterdam departure for Chicago were directed to contact United Airlines for further information. The UK’s Department for Transport advised US-bound travelers to check their flight with the airline before setting off for the airport.
Duffy urged Congress to fund air traffic control improvements and warned that further interruptions would follow without upgrades. He said the disruption should not affect Thanksgiving travel in a couple of weeks, while federal officials cautioned that restoring airports and airlines to full capacity would take time.
