US air travel expected to recover by Sunday after nationwide shutdown sparks chaos

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A nationwide FAA ground stop disrupted thousands of US flights after a communications failure. The record shutdown renewed scrutiny of ageing air traffic control infrastructure.

US air travel is expected to return largely to normal by the end of Sunday after a nationwide ground stop triggered the longest shutdown of flights in 25 years, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Saturday. However, airlines are still dealing with thousands of cancellations and delays as they work to restore normal operations.

Bedford said the situation had stabilised and expressed confidence that the worst of the disruption was over, although he cautioned that travellers would continue to face delays and cancellations through Saturday.

"The system is stable, and I expect airline operations to largely return to normal by late Sunday," Bedford said, apologising for the disruption caused by the shutdown.

The FAA had ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday, halting almost all departing flights across the United States for nearly five hours after a major communications failure disrupted air traffic control operations. The shutdown triggered widespread cancellations and delays, leaving hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded and disrupting airline schedules across the country.

According to flight-tracking data, airlines cancelled around 4,500 flights and delayed another 4,400 on Saturday as they struggled to recover from the disruption. The impact was compounded by difficulties in repositioning aircraft, flight crews and other personnel to resume scheduled services.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the disruption was triggered by the installation of at least one new router by FAA contractor L3Harris at a remote facility. The installation led to an overload of data at other communications centres, affecting the system used by air traffic controllers to communicate with aircraft.

"We're working to determine whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven't determined what the fault was," Duffy said at a press conference on Saturday.

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