The Smart Marty Sky Dispatch
Airlines report Saturday cancellations 1 day after FAA issues historic ground stop
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop on all air traffic at U.S. airports Friday. U.S. officials say the root cause was a communications problem.
Airlines faced a slow return to normal operations Saturday after the FAA lifted a nationwide ground stop Friday night, but hundreds of flights remained grounded. FlightAware tallied more than 3,850 cancellations across the United States on Saturday, following a Friday total of 9,147 cancellations.
The shutdown followed a more-than four-hour halt in flight departures due to problems with air traffic control communications. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the disruption stemmed from instability in radar and communications systems at major ATC facilities, with more than 3,500 flights already airborne when the ground stop was issued.
Officials stressed that passengers were not in danger and that the public had not been affected by a cyberattack. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin described the incident as mechanically driven and said investigators had found no evidence of cyber involvement, with the probe ongoing.
Airlines began announcing no-cost flight changes as disruptions continued while carriers rescheduled flights and repositioned crews and aircraft. Duffy indicated it would take time to unwind the disruption and warned that some delays and cancellations would persist as operations gradually returned to normal.
Duffy highlighted aging air traffic control technology as a major concern and called for emergency funding to modernize the system, while noting the FAA is already engaged in a $12.5 billion modernization program to upgrade infrastructure and radio networks.
Early reports from an anonymous air traffic controller described a frequency issue that spread across multiple towers, prompting the ground stop. The officials involved suggested communication gaps among FAA leadership and noted that details about the cause were not immediately clear.
Duffy did not expect the disruption to extend into the Thanksgiving travel period, but he warned of continued delays as the industry works to recover. He emphasized coordination with airlines to support the ongoing recovery and to safely return people home.