US air travel returning to normal
Detailed summary
US air travel returned to normal on Sunday after a nationwide ground stop left hundreds of thousands of passengers in limbo and disrupted travel ...
NEW YORK: US air travel returned to normal on Sunday after a nationwide ground stop left hundreds of thousands of passengers in limbo and disrupted travel worldwide. The Trump administration blamed Friday’s ground stop - meaning no planes can take off - on a botched replacement of old copper wire communication lines. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Bryan Bedford said that 12,000 flights were canceled on Friday, while tracking website FlightAware showed more than 6,600 canceled flights on Saturday.
As of Sunday morning, FlightAware had recorded more than 1,200 canceled flights. Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Bedford predicted a full resumption of flight schedules by “close of business on Sunday.” During the outage, footage from airports showed gates full, with planes waiting on taxiways and passengers thronging concourses, desperate for information. “Tired. Exhausted. Frustrated. Yeah, you know, it’s just a mess, right?” Lisa Beraid, 48, who works for an insurance company, told AFP as she waited for a flight on Saturday morning at New York’s LaGuardia airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the four-hour ground stop was declared after maintenance work to upgrade an old copper wire to a high-speed fiber cable had caused “issues” with communication with planes and radar feeds. “Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment... it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system,” Duffy told reporters. In another embarrassment, Saturday’s news conference - where administration officials appealed for more funds to upgrade outdated systems - was delayed due to technical problems with the audio feed.
Friday’s disruption was only the second time such a ground stop had been issued in US airspace - which is among the busiest in the world - since the 9/11 attacks. The nationwide halt was lifted at 8:15 pm Eastern Time Friday (0115 GMT Saturday).
At LaGuardia airport, some travelers were more sanguine than others…
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