Flight disruptions continue a day after nationwide ground stop

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Flight disruptions continued Saturday, one day after the nation’s longest ground stop in 25 years, as officials work to explain what led to the pause in flying.

A nationwide ground stop began Friday just before 4 p.m. E.T., and lasted more than four hours, halting flights across the U.S. Officials said the cause was an equipment outage.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the ground stop on an effort to update old technology. He said new equipment overloaded old routers, causing communications and radar gaps.

“At least one of our remote FAA locations, a contractor was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunication lines from old copper wire, and they were bringing it over to fiber,” Duffy said. “What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3 Harris, or did they install a faulty router.”

Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford addressed travelers affected by the ground stop.

“I’m sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons,” he said.

The ground stop left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded and disrupted travel plans for 1.5 million fliers. It also caused thousands of flight delays and cancellations.

Questions arose over whether the outage was a cyber attack. The FAA said it does not believe that was the case.

Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood commented on the effect on air travel.

“It’s a national calamity, there’s no question about it,” LaHood said. “This is something that no one wishes would ever happen, but when you have old equipment, this is what happens.”

LaHood, a former Republican Congressman from Illinois, served as Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration from 2009-2013.

Duffy has asked Congress to approve more funding to replace old systems. He used Friday’s ground stop to renew that request.

Air traffic control operations are slowly resuming. The FAA expects about 5,000 flight cancellations Saturday as airlines adjust their schedules. Most operations are expected to be back on track by Sunday night.