Federal Aviation Administration officials said Saturday that air travel across the United States should return to normal by the end of Sunday, after a nationwide ground stop disrupted flights for much of Friday and into Saturday. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the "worst is behind us," signaling that the agency expects the most severe effects of the outage to be over.
The ground stop was issued Friday afternoon and lifted at 8:15 p.m. Eastern, after air traffic had been halted for more than four hours. The FAA cited gaps in communications and radar as the cause. It was the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, and the first to halt flights across the entire country since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The disruption was tied to work being performed by a contractor. According to the agency's reporting, L3Harris was replacing copper wiring with fiber optic lines when the communications and radar problems emerged. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed either the contractor or faulty equipment for the failure. Investigators are still working to determine whether contractor incompetence or a faulty router caused the breakdown, and the agency has not yet settled on a single explanation.
The outage affected roughly 15,000 flights over Friday and Saturday. Even after the restrictions were lifted, airlines are dealing with residual delays and cancellations as they reposition aircraft and crews to where they are needed. Those knock-on effects can persist for hours after the national system resumes normal operation, because planes and pilots must be moved into position before schedules can fully recover.
The scale of the disruption meant that passengers across the country were affected at once, with no alternative network to fall back on. A nationwide halt differs from a localized weather delay in that every major hub is affected simultaneously, and carriers cannot easily shift flights to unaffected airports. That is why the FAA's assurance that the worst has passed carries weight for airlines still trying to rebuild their schedules.
Travelers have been urged to check the status of their flights directly with their airlines before heading to airports. Carriers can provide the most current information on rebooking options, schedule changes and cancellations as operations are restored, and officials have advised passengers not to rely solely on outdated itineraries.
The incident is likely to renew attention on the condition of the nation's air traffic control systems. The FAA has faced scrutiny over aging infrastructure, and this weekend's halt follows a January 2023 nationwide ground stop caused by a malfunction in the agency's notification system. The earlier stop was brief by comparison, while Friday's outage lasted more than four hours and extended across the full national network, making it the most significant interruption to U.S. air traffic in a quarter century.