US air travel disruptions continue into third day

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US air travel disruptions continue as FAA ground stop causes thousands of flight cancellations and delays, with cause still unclear. Read more at straitstimes.com.

Passengers waiting at their departure gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in Arlington, Virginia, on Nov 14. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has predicted a return to normality by Nov 16.

NEW YORK - US air travel disruptions continued for a third day with more than 5,200 flights already affected on Nov 15, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted a return to normality by Nov 16 even as airlines scrambled to get back on schedule following a systemwide ground stop.

More than 1,600 flights nationwide were cancelled and almost 3,600 were delayed on Nov 15, according to aviation data site FlightAware. Airlines on Nov 14 had cancelled more than 6,400 US flights and delayed more than 8,000.

Duffy said on ABC’s This Week programme there is no evidence of a cyberattack or other malicious intent in the matter, but the cause remained unclear.

Duffy said that flights will come “back to normal” on Nov 15 “but probably fully normal” on Nov 16, and emphasised the Federal Aviation Administration’s focus on keeping passengers safe.

On Nov 15, 27% of JetBlue flights and 13% of American Airlines flights were cancelled, with Southwest, United Airlines and Delta reporting cancellations of 3% to 5% of their flights.

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop on Nov 13 that halted nearly all departing flights for almost five hours. It was the longest nationwide halt to US air travel since the Sept 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

The installation by FAA contractor L3Harris of at least one new router at a remote facility led to a situation in which other air traffic control centres were overloaded with a flood of data that hampered communications systems, according to officials.

Duffy said on Nov 15 that the replacement of a router at an FAA facility in El Dorado, Arkansas, triggered problems with a recently replaced router in Amarillo, Texas, which started broadcasting and overloading routers at other air traffic control centres across the country.

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