US air travel disruption to last into Sunday after longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years
Air travel across the United States is expected to keep facing cancellations and delays well into Sunday as the aviation system slowly recovers from a nationwide ground stop that halted nearly all departing flights for almost five hours on Friday. It was the longest nationwide halt to US air travel since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and one of the worst single travel days in the country's history.
On Friday about 9,200 flights were canceled and 7,500 delayed. By 6:45 pm US Eastern Time on Saturday airlines had canceled more than 6,150 further flights and delayed more than 7,300, according to flight-tracking data, and more than 530 flights scheduled for Sunday were already canceled. Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded in airports, and college and professional sports teams were forced to find alternate transport to games.
Router work at the center of the investigation
The White House convened an emergency meeting in the Situation Room on Friday and federal agencies initially scrambled to determine whether the failure was a cyberattack. Investigators instead traced the problem to the installation of at least one new router at a remote facility by L3Harris, a government contractor, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The router problem flooded air traffic communications centers with data, with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting radio contact with aircraft and destabilizing radar systems at 17 of the 22 centers that control aircraft during the cruise portion of flights.
Duffy said investigators have not yet determined whether the cause was installer error or a faulty router. L3Harris said it is taking the issue seriously and supporting the investigation; its shares fell about 4 percent in after-hours trading on Friday. Federal Aviation Administration head Bryan Bedford apologized for the disruption, said the system is now stable and predicted airline schedules would largely return to normal by late Sunday. He stressed that no control center ever lost all communications, but said the ground stop was ordered in case one did. The FAA said it was carrying out additional testing with L3Harris to identify any remaining risks.
Airlines cut schedules as passengers wait
Delta, United and American each canceled about a quarter of their flights on Saturday, while JetBlue canceled nearly 45 percent. Airlines issued travel waivers letting passengers rebook for later dates at no cost, but with crews and aircraft out of position, the disruption is expected to be felt for days. Some travelers described the anxiety of the unexplained halt, with one passenger saying it brought back memories of September 11.
Calls for 50 billion dollars to fix an aging system
The failure is the most dramatic sign yet of strain on an air traffic control network suffering from aging technology, equipment problems and a shortage of several thousand controllers. After initially asking for 30.1 billion dollars on Friday, Duffy raised the request to 50 billion dollars late that day to upgrade airports and the air traffic control system. Congress approved 12.5 billion dollars for the effort last year, but of 4.3 billion dollars in contracts awarded so far, only about 1 billion dollars has been spent, according to Larsen and Carson.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he supports approving more air traffic funding this year, though Republicans control Congress only until January, when Democrats take over after their gains in the November 3 midterm elections. Representatives Rick Larsen and Andre Carson, the Democrats in line to chair the House transportation committee and its aviation subcommittee next year, said their panels will hold the administration accountable for what happened to make sure, in their words, that this chaos does not happen again.