US air travel disruptions continue into third day; over 5,200 flights affected

Detailed summary

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop on November 13 that halted nearly all departing ​flights for almost five hours ...

US air travel disruptions continued for a third day with more than 5,200 flights already affected on Sunday, November 15, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted a return to normalcy by Monday 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 Sunday, according to aviation data site FlightAware. Airlines on Saturday had cancelled more than 6,400 US flights and delayed more than 8,000.

Duffy said on ABC's "This Week" program 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 Sunday "but probably fully normal" on Monday, and emphasized the Federal Aviation Administration's focus on keeping passengers safe.

On Sunday, 27 per cent of JetBlue flights and 13 per cent of American Airlines flights were cancelled, with Southwest, United Airlines and Delta reporting cancellations of 3 per cent to 5 per cent of their flights.

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday that halted nearly all departing ​flights for almost five hours. It was the longest nationwide halt to US air travel since the September 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 centers were overloaded with a flood of data that hampered communications systems, according to officials.

Duffy said on Sunday 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 centers across the country.

The "functionality of the originating routers" has been disabled, the FAA said on Sunday, adding that it did the same for about 60 similar routers in the air traffic…

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