US lifts nationwide ground stop, allowing flights to resume after hours of travel chaos

Detailed summary

The rare nationwide ground stop order, issued due to a communications problem affecting US air traffic control towers, caused chaos at airports and triggered the longest shutdown…

The rare nationwide ground stop order, issued due to a communications problem affecting US air traffic control towers, caused chaos at airports and triggered the longest shutdown since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

WASHINGTON: The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday (Nov 13) after a communications failure at air traffic control centres caused chaos at airports and triggered the longest nationwide shutdown since the Sep 11, 2001, attacks.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said US airspace reopened at 8.15pm Eastern Time (0115 GMT), but warned that departures would resume gradually and it would take time for airlines to restore normal operations.

More than 6,600 flights were cancelled and 8,600 delayed, with another 1,500 already cancelled for Sunday, according to FlightRadar24. Aviation analysts said the four-hour nationwide grounding could disrupt airline schedules for days.

Duffy said tens of thousands of passengers were stranded at airports around the country.

The failure is the latest and most dramatic sign of strain on a US air traffic control system beset by ageing technology, equipment and communications problems and a shortage of several thousand controllers.

Duffy said the trouble began at 3.36 pm when air traffic control centres experienced instability in radar and communications systems. Switches and routers carrying critical data became overloaded, producing inconsistent information and prompting the FAA to halt departures nationwide, he said.

"Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data from those routers and because of that we shut the system down," Duffy said, adding at no stage did they completely lose radar or communications and were able to safely land thousands of planes.

Duffy said the immediate problem had been fixed and that flying was safe, but warned that a broader overhaul of the ageing air traffic control system was needed…

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