Major airlines on Saturday cancelled more than 3,700 US flights and delayed 2,000 more as the United States sought to recover from the longest nationwide shutdown of flights since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The FAA on Friday issued a nationwide ground stop that halted nearly all departing flights for almost five hours, which forced airlines to cancel nearly 10,000 flights and delay more than 7,000 others in one of the worst travel days in US history.
Though the FAA eventually lifted the ground stop on Friday night, the disruption for passengers was far from over, with tens of thousands of people still stranded at airports around the country. Airlines were trying to unclog airports and get flight crews and other personnel in position to recover from the massive disruption.
United Airlines and Delta Air Lines on Saturday announced ground stops for their own flights at Chicago O’Hare Airport and at New York LaGuardia Airport, respectively, to handle congestion and gate issues. Many major airports said they could not handle any more diversions as they tried to get airplanes back in the sky.
American Airlines late on Friday said it was prioritizing flights to international destinations and to smaller cities outside its major hubs to position aircraft and crews for a faster recovery.
The FAA issued the ground stop because of an outage that appeared to be affecting a network that handles critical radio frequencies used by air traffic controllers to communicate with pilots, according to two airline officials.
The contractor that oversees the network, L3Harris, did not respond to a request for comment.
