US flights to return to normal by Sunday after nationwide ground stop, FAA says

Airlines canceled thousands of flights across the U.S. on Saturday as they worked to recover from a nationwide ground stop a day earlier that left passengers scrambling for seats and disrupted travel around the world. Thousands of flights were canceled across the US on Saturday as airlines struggled to recover from a nationwide ground stop that disrupted air travel.

(Reuters Photo)The U.S. air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday, two days after what was the nation's longest ground stop in 25 years, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters in Washington on Saturday.

He said airlines “will still have delays and cancellations” Saturday but promised that the “worst is behind us.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem began when contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was replacing a section of the air traffic control system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire, somehow causing the system to overload.

The work led to “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, prompting the government to shut down air traffic for more than four hours. Duffy said officials were investigating whether contractor “incompetence” or a faulty router was the cause.

“Our contractor didn't meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment,” he added. “L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously,” it said in a statement.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, said Friday's stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S.

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 … 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 U.S. on Saturday, passengers were still scrambling to figure out how to get to their destinations.

Some waited out the chaos in hotels, others sprinted to snag rental cars and bus or train tickets. Many were forced to camp out in airports. Others got creative. Video in Seattle's airport showed a passenger serenading stressed out travelers with classical music.

Stranded strangers participated in a cornhole tournament at the Lexington, Kentucky, airport. The singer T-Pain and the band Hoobastank were captured on video singing to passengers as they waited on commercial airplanes.

Dan Russell, 66, learned his connecting flight from Kona, Hawaii, to Fresno, California, was canceled a half-hour before boarding was scheduled in San Diego on Friday night. Hotels were full, so he and his wife waited at the airport for a rebooked flight.

A cheerful Southwest Airlines gate agent at Dallas Love Field greeted passengers at dawn with, “Good morning, good morning,” then repeatedly said all flights were full and asked passengers to have boarding passes ready to help keep flights moving.

At the Newark, N.J., airport, Umi Egchi was trying to figure out when his flights would line up so he could return home to Japan. “I’m not sure exactly what happened. I just want to go home,” said Egchi, who had a sleep mask on top of his head.

Sports teams that traveled for games this weekend adjusted game start times, and No. 19 Mississippi’s game at Oklahoma was delayed a full day to Sunday. FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, said more than 6,000 flights within, into or out of the U.S.

had been canceled Saturday. Officials say no one was in danger during ground stop Duffy reiterated Saturday that no one was in danger as more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the grounding order landed safely.