US flights resume after nationwide ground stop

Detailed summary

US authorities lifted a nationwide ground stop that lasted four hours, disrupted thousands of flights and stranded passengers across the country, clearing the way for airlines to…

US authorities lifted a nationwide ground stop that lasted four hours, disrupted thousands of flights and stranded passengers across the country, clearing the way for airlines to resume operations.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted flying on Friday after a data overload crippled air traffic control communications and radar, the agency said, in an incident that laid bare the frailty of America’s crucial aviation infrastructure.

The ground stop was lifted at 8.15pm ET on Friday. Airlines now face the challenge of restoring their schedules after the shutdown, with delays and cancellations potentially rippling through the system as carriers work to get aircraft and crews back into position.

It was unclear how long it would take US air traffic to return to normal.

“Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data, and they went down,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a news conference.

“And I shouldn’t say they went down. They started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”

Mr Duffy said it would "take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon".

He later added, “I think we’re going to be back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel during Thanksgiving.”

Markwayne Mullin, US Secretary of Homeland Security, said he believed it was the first time since the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001 that the US had seen a total stoppage of flights.

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