US Lifts Nationwide Flight Ground Stop After Four-Hour Shutdown; Over 6,800 Flights Cancelled
A rare FAA ground stop halted departures across the US for more than four hours on Friday; Air India told passengers on US routes to check flight status.
Flights are slowly restarting across the United States after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted departures at all US airports for more than four hours on Friday, leaving thousands of passengers stranded in terminals and on planes, The Guardian reported.
What happened
The nationwide ground stop ran from just before 4 pm to 8:15 pm US Eastern Time on Friday, 13 November (roughly 2:30 am to 6:45 am IST on Saturday). It followed failures in communications, radio frequencies and radar that began in Chicago, according to aviation news site The Air Current, as cited by The Guardian.
Flight-tracking site FlightAware counted 8,553 delayed and 6,816 cancelled flights on Friday. The Guardian said this was only the second ground stop of all US departures since the 9/11 attacks; the last one, in January 2023, lasted under two hours.
What officials said
No full explanation has been given for what was described as a telecommunications outage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested that older systems were overwhelmed with data after the FAA introduced new technology. Mullin said there was no evidence of a cyber attack.
Airlines restart, but delays will linger
United, Delta, American and Southwest said they were resuming flights after the order was lifted, with some flying on Friday night. The Guardian noted that normal schedules will take time to return because many aircraft and crews are now in the wrong places. At New York’s JFK airport, some passengers had their flights cancelled even after boarding.
India–US flights
Air India issued a travel advisory warning that its flights to and from the US could be disrupted, and asked passengers to check the latest status of their flights before leaving for the airport, ABP Live reported. Other airlines including IndiGo also advised travellers to check for updates.
Featured image: Air traffic control tower, Orlando International Airport by Olga Ernst, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
Related
Microsoft Says It Is “Deeply Sorry” as Global Outlook and Teams Outage Eases
Israel: Eisenkot Gets Mandate to Form Government as Netanyahu Bloc Falls Short of Majority
