Air travel across the United States slowly returned to normal on Saturday, one day after a nationwide ground stop ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration forced thousands of flight cancellations and stranded passengers at major airports around the country.
"We are back at full operations," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference on Saturday. He thanked pilots, airline staff, air traffic controllers and the FAA for their professionalism during the stoppage, noting that they "safely landed all of our aircraft," and expressed gratitude to passengers for their patience through what he called a significant disruption.
In a social media post earlier Saturday, Duffy wrote: "Planes are pushing back, taxiing, and taking off, and it is safe to fly." He cautioned that travelers would "continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition" aircraft and crews where they are needed most.
More than 4,100 flights were canceled on Saturday and roughly 3,200 were delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The disruption was far worse on Friday, when about 9,159 flights were canceled and 7,190 were delayed, leaving passengers stuck at airports nationwide.
The ground stop began at 3:36 p.m. EST on Friday, when the FAA ordered the stoppage while approximately 3,500 planes were in the air. All airborne aircraft landed safely, and the order was lifted around 8:20 p.m. EST. It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that, the last national ground stop occurred after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Duffy said Saturday that a preliminary investigation found that a contractor for L3Harris, a technology and defense company that owns the system, was working at a remote FAA location, switching old copper wire to fiber while replacing a router, when the router began flooding other routers and overloading the network. He said there were 1,000 attempts to log on every four to five seconds. The FAA is working to determine whether the failure was human error or a faulty router, Duffy said, adding that many contractors "take our money and provide really poor service."
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said updating the wires was routine maintenance the agency had been working on for years. After the router flooded the system for 45 minutes, officials could not determine the cause of the instability, which then spread to 17 facilities, he said. The FAA issued the ground stop "out of an abundance of caution," Bedford said, adding that he stands behind that call and that there was zero evidence of anything nefarious or anything related to artificial intelligence.
The FAA's preliminary investigation indicated the outage was caused by a telecommunications failure, and senior government sources told CBS News the problem was isolated to specific hardware: Cisco 600 series routers manufactured between 2001 and 2006. Duffy, who described "an incredibly old air traffic control system," said the FAA is working to modernize its aging infrastructure thanks to a $12.5 billion down payment secured by President Trump, "but that isn't ENOUGH." The administration boosted its request for air traffic control funding to $50 billion late Friday.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a Friday briefing there were no indications the ground stop was the result of a cyberattack, and Duffy said Saturday he does not believe it was one, though he acknowledged the FAA system did not "meet the moment." Officials stressed that it is completely safe for Americans to fly, with Duffy calling US airspace the "busiest" and "safest" in the world and saying the top priority is making sure travelers get home safely to their families as quickly as possible.
Duffy advised travelers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport. Delta said Saturday it was offering customers flexible rebooking options while continuing to restore operations after a four-hour ground stop, warning that travelers should expect delays and additional schedule adjustments. American Airlines said it had taken a number of steps toward recovery but cautioned that "the lingering effects of this major disruption to the national airspace system will continue today, including additional delays and cancellations."
