Flights resume after longest U.S. ground stop in 25 years

More than 2,500 flights canceled Saturday, tracker says

Flights began departing U.S. airports again late Friday after a nationwide ground stop ended around 8:15 p.m. ET — the longest flight stoppage in 25 years. The Federal Aviation Administration said airplane departures could resume late Friday evening Eastern time, and told passengers to contact their airlines for information about their flights.

Officials said the system is likely to be operating normally in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush. But the ripple effect from the stoppage could be felt for days.

More than 2,500 flights were canceled in the U.S. on Saturday and hundreds more were delayed, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Americans traveling that getting air traffic back to normal won’t be quick. Duffy suggested more disruptions might occur. “We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said.

International flights are being handled on a case-by-case basis, according to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. San Francisco airport said that flights headed across the Pacific Ocean were cleared to leave the airport from Friday evening, including flights destined for Hawaii and Asia. Europe’s aviation agency suspended U.S.-bound departures at the request of the FAA from 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday until midnight.

Airlines are obligated to offer free rebooking on another flight for travelers who want to continue their journey, or a refund if their flight was canceled and they decide not to take the trip.

New technology being hooked up to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment, Trump administration officials said. That caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the flight shutdown of more than four hours, according to officials.

The air traffic control modernization began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion of funding. Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.

Microsoft said it had no indication that the ground stop was related to the service disruption that took Outlook and other services offline Thursday, a spokesperson for the company said.

Mullin said there is no indication the failure was related to a cyberattack, either. “There was never any lives at risk,” Mullin added. “There was no flights at risk. FAA was able to handle it. We did it.” The ground stop was enacted “out of an abundance of caution,” he said.