U.S. air travel resumed after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ended its nationwide ground stop, but Saturday’s cancellations showed the shutdown’s effects were continuing to disrupt travelers and airline schedules.
The Associated Press, citing FlightAware, reported a Saturday-night tally of more than 6,400 canceled flights, compared with 41,000 scheduled for Nov. 14. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said Saturday that airspace was open but passengers should expect further delays and cancellations.
The FAA lifted the stop at 8:15 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 13 (01:15 UTC Nov. 14), after communications problems affected several air traffic control centers. Duffy said communications and radar instability began at 3:36 p.m. EST that day (20:36 UTC).
Duffy said contractor L3Harris was replacing a copper telecommunications line with fiber at a remote FAA site when a router began sending more than 1,000 connection requests to other routers every four to five seconds. He said the bursts disrupted aircraft communications and some radar feeds. Officials had not determined whether contractor error or equipment failure was responsible. “We haven't determined what the fault was,” Duffy said.
Duffy said more than 3,500 aircraft were airborne when the problems began and were landed safely. The DOT reported that more than 8,000 flight operations resumed after the stop ended Friday night.
The DOT described the telecommunications network as decades old. Duffy said the copper line involved in the incident was due to be discontinued. He said the copper line was due to be discontinued and that 69% of the FAA’s copper communications had been converted to high-speed fiber. Congress has provided $12.5 billion for modernization, which Duffy called partial funding; he urged lawmakers to fund the remaining work. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the maintenance involved in the outage was separate from modernization. “I think we’re conflating ‘Modernization’ with this upgrade at this particular facility,” Bedford said.
The FAA also ordered a nationwide ground stop in January 2023 after an outage in its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which provides safety information to flight crews.
