What forced the US to ground all planes? A router switch, we now know

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US officials say a routine upgrade that went awry caused the mass disruption of air travel.

Airlines are still scrambling to return operations to normal after the longest and only second nationwide stop of flights in the United States since the attacks of 9/11 in 2001.

More than 5,000 flights were cancelled in the US on Saturday after over 9,000 were scrapped a day earlier as the knock-on effects continued from Friday’s abrupt ground stop. The stoppage was halted after more than four hours on Friday night, but airports and carriers were still grappling with large backlogs and resulting delays.

The decision to suddenly ground all planes on Friday initially triggered speculation of a cyberattack.

But officials have since ruled that out and named the reason for the weekend disruptions as a routine replacement of the communications routers that connect the US air traffic control system.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop of flights at 3:54pm East Coast time (20:54 GMT) on Friday, citing a telecommunications outage affecting air route traffic control centres.

The outage caused thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed across the US.

The ground stop was removed at 8:15pm on Friday (01:15 GMT on Saturday), but hundreds of flights were still delayed or cancelled that night, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Aircraft already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations and land during the ground stop while international flights were handled on a case-by-case basis with some allowed to depart despite the restrictions.

A routine upgrade was being carried out – maintenance work that ultimately overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the ground stop, US officials said.

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