US air travel slowly recovers from nationwide flight ground stop as chaos continues

Thousands of flights still canceled as officials blamed ageing air control system for nationwide grounding

Travel chaos continued across the US on Saturday morning as airlines scrambled to recover from a four-hour nationwide Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop that delayed or canceled thousands of the flights.

On Saturday morning, more than 3,000 flights within, into or out of the US had already been canceled, according to FlightAware.

The longest nationwide group stop in 25 years left passengers stranded at airports across the country, with no certainty about exactly when they may reach their intended destination.

The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, on Friday blamed the ground stop on an ageing air control system, saying that the air traffic communications equipment became “overloaded with data and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers”.

“Because of that, we shut the system down,” the Trump administration official said.

The US homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said on Friday that there was “no indication as of yet” that the communications failure had been caused by “a nefarious attack against us”.

Duffy warned that it would “take us time” to “resume normal operations”.

“Our top priority is the safety of you and your family when you fly,” he said.

The rare flight grounding caused widespread disruptions, throwing travel plans into disarray as more than 8,000 flights across the country were canceled on Friday.

Among those affected by the fallout from the ground stop were sports teams traveling for games over the weekend. In college football, the Southeastern Conference announced that Mississippi’s game against Oklahoma had been rescheduled to Sunday – a day usually reserved for the National Football League (NFL).

Meanwhile, a men’s college basketball game between the University of North Carolina Greensboro and Cornell University, scheduled for Saturday, was postponed.

And although flights began resuming after the FAA’s decision to lift the ground stop, the aftermath still appears to be affecting passengers around the country. There were reported flight disruptions at airports in major cities including Boston, Washington DC, New York and Miami.

In a statement on Saturday, Duffy said that “operations are slowly returning to normal this morning” – but he added that “you will continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition aircraft/crews where they are needed most”.

“Our top priority right now is making sure travelers get home safely to their families as quickly as possible,” he said.

Duffy said he planned to hold a news briefing at 10.30am ET.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also issued a statement on Saturday morning warning that “while US flights have resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines work to re-book affected passengers and get all services back to normal”.

The statement added: “Anyone due to travel on flights between the UK and USA should check with their airline for the latest information before heading to the airport.”

During the news briefing on Friday evening, Trump administration officials urged Congress – which until January is controlled by the White House’s Republican allies – to “fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system”.

Friday marked the third nationwide ground stop issued by the FAA this century. The first occurred after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. And the second took place in January 2023, after a pilot notification system went down.