FAA Ground Stop Ends, but Flight Disruptions Continue Through the Weekend
A communications failure halted departures across the country Friday, leaving passengers stranded and disrupting travel for college and professional sports teams. The nationwide ground stop lasted more than four hours—the longest in 25 years—and airlines spent the weekend working through cancellations as investigators examined equipment connected to the outage.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said officials detected unstable radar data and communications at 3:36 p.m. The problems affected facilities that guide aircraft both near airports and between them. At 3:54 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration stopped departures nationwide. About 3,500 planes were already in the air, and controllers and pilots followed procedures to land them safely.
Duffy said officials had not lost all radar data or telecommunications service. But the inconsistent information was enough to prompt a precautionary shutdown because of a communications issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.
Federal agencies also considered whether the failure might have involved a cyberattack. President Donald Trump convened a call with intelligence officials, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Intelligence partners were not seeing the usual signs of a cyberattack, Duffy said.
White House communications director Steven Cheung said the administration acted within minutes of receiving the FAA notice. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday there was no indication of a deliberate attack and urged people not to fear for relatives who were traveling.
The disruption complicated travel plans for several college football teams. Texas had boarded a plane bound for Baton Rouge to play LSU, while Tennessee’s scheduled flight to College Station was also held up. Ole Miss, Tennessee and Baylor returned to their athletic facilities as teams considered other options. Some players and staff waited aboard charter planes for as long as two hours.
Professional teams were affected, too. The Brooklyn Nets were trying to fly from New Orleans to Memphis when their departure was stopped. The Memphis Grizzlies were in New Orleans for a game against the Pelicans and planned to leave afterward. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls also had postgame flights planned. The San Jose Sharks’ flight to Utah did not depart before the shutdown, while the Detroit Pistons had arrived in Miami earlier Friday.
The FAA lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m., allowing departures to resume. Aircraft began leaving airports including LaGuardia, Los Angeles International and Reagan National. Some passengers at Reagan National had been waiting since about 3:30 p.m. for flights scheduled to depart around 4.
Duffy cautioned that lifting the order would not get every flight moving right away. Airlines needed to have pilots, flight attendants and other crew members available. “It’s going to be slow,” he said.
Teams continued to face travel problems after flights resumed. Washington, Texas, Tennessee and Oregon State were heading back to airports by 9:12 p.m., but other programs struggled to find available crews. Utah’s charter crew had reached its limit on working hours, so the team planned to leave Saturday morning for its game at Arizona. The Big 12 moved kickoff to 10:30 p.m. ET Saturday.
Just after midnight Saturday, the Ole Miss-Oklahoma game was moved to 1 p.m. ET Sunday after Ole Miss could not leave Friday evening. Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny said his school objected to the change but was told it would forfeit if it refused to play Sunday.
At a Saturday briefing, Duffy explained that contractor L3Harris had been replacing aging copper communications lines with fiber-optic connections at a remote FAA site. The copper line was being phased out, making the replacement necessary.
During the work, a router began making more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. The traffic overwhelmed other routers and disrupted communications and radar feeds. Investigators were looking at whether an installation mistake or faulty equipment was responsible. “Our contractor didn’t meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment,” Duffy said.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the maintenance work was separate from the administration’s broader air traffic control modernization program. Duffy said officials would also review when this kind of work should be scheduled. Bedford said the worst of the disruption had passed and expected air travel to return to normal by the end of Sunday.
More than 8,000 flight operations resumed Friday night after the ground stop ended, according to the Transportation Department. Still, delays and cancellations continued Saturday as airlines repositioned aircraft and crews. Passengers were left checking whether flights would operate and trying to rebook. Officials advised travelers to confirm flight details with their airlines.
By Sunday morning, Duffy said service should improve through the day but might not fully recover until Monday, revising an earlier expectation that operations would be back to normal by Sunday night.
Investigators were testing two routers from Texas and Arkansas. Duffy said work in El Dorado, Arkansas, was followed by problems involving equipment in Amarillo, Texas, where a system had been replaced about three weeks earlier. Engineers were examining the routers at an L3Harris laboratory in Florida.
“We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor,” Duffy said. He reiterated that there was no evidence of a foreign cyberattack, while saying investigators would continue looking if new information emerged.
Duffy also called on Congress to provide more funding. He said the $12.5 billion already allocated was intended for particular upgrades, including radar, radios and electronic flight strips, but did not cover replacing the telecommunications network.
By 2 p.m. ET Sunday, 5,280 flights within, into or out of the United States had been delayed and 1,709 canceled, according to FlightAware. Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta and Chicago O’Hare were among the airports with the most disruption, each reporting hundreds of delays.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby praised the FAA’s decision to pause flights and thanked employees and customers for their patience. He said he had spoken with Duffy, Bedford and aviation leaders from both parties in Congress about the impact on United passengers and staff.
Kirby called the outage a reason to improve technology and ensure the FAA has enough workers. He said modernizing the air traffic control system was important for safety, travelers and the economy, and that lawmakers from both parties were committed to upgrades while holding the agency accountable.
