FAA Outage Grounds Over 2,000 US Flights; Service Expected To Resume Sunday
By The Media Line Staff
More than 2,000 flights were canceled across the United States following a nationwide air traffic control system failure Friday that grounded aircraft for more than four hours, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is working to resume normal operations by Sunday evening.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Saturday that airlines would continue experiencing disruptions but expected schedules to return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The “worst is behind us,” Bedford said, although carriers “will still have delays and cancellations” Saturday.
The disruption, described as the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, followed a malfunction involving the FAA’s radar and communications infrastructure during work to modernize the aging system.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a contractor replacing old copper wiring with fiber-optic cable had apparently triggered an overload that caused intermittent failures in radar and communications services.
Investigators are examining whether defective wiring or contractor “incompetence” was responsible.
“Our contractor didn’t meet the moment,” Duffy said.
The resulting ground stop lasted more than four hours Friday, disrupting flight operations nationwide and leaving airlines struggling to reposition aircraft and restore schedules.
Major airports affected included New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Denver International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and Boston Logan International Airport.
Aviation consultant Andrew Charlton estimated that Friday’s shutdown affected approximately one-quarter of the flights operating daily across the country, ABC News reported.
Friday’s nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023, when a malfunction in the FAA computer system responsible for distributing safety notices to pilots halted departures across the country. It was also only the second nationwide aviation shutdown since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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