The nationwide ground stop that brought all air travel to a halt across the country and stranded thousands of passengers has been canceled, according to Federal Aviation Administration.
Within minutes of flight traffic being restored, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, took to a podium Friday night at the White House to decry Congress, accusing lawmakers of dragging their feet when it came to fully funding upgrades he warned were vital to prevent similar failures from happening again.
“It’s going to continue to fail,” Mr. Duffy told reporters, adding: “How many times does this have to happen for Congress to give the money to fix it?”
Mr. Duffy added that the antiquated radar and telecoms systems that controllers rely on to transmit data and other information between facilities began to falter around 3:36 p.m. The aging system, which has undergone a number of upgrades, became overloaded, officials said.
Appearing alongside him, Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, stressed that there was never any indication that the communications failures had been triggered by a cyberattack, but he added, “we are still looking, and we’re not going to rule it out.” He emphasized that lives were never in danger.
But the incident appeared to inject new fuel into Mr. Duffy now monthslong campaign to secure at least $30 billion in extra funding for air traffic control modernization.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to upgrade aging air traffic facilities and technology, funds Mr. Duffy has repeatedly referred to as a “down payment” when asking for tens of billions more. On Friday night, Mr. Duffy appeared to up the ante, telling reporters that he didn’t just want another $30 billion for the project, but another $50 billion. He argued that it should be delivered in emergency funding before the end of the year, after which control of Congress — and the budget — switches from Republicans to Democrats.
Some Democratic lawmakers already have raised questions about how efficiently and effectively the F.A.A. has spent the money they have been given thus far. But Mr. Duffy has long argued that his department cannot be expected to complete a meaningful overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system without a massive influx of funding.
Friday’s nationwide ground stop was only the third that the F.A.A. has issued this century. It ranks as the second-longest, after the ground stop issued on Sept. 11, 2001, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. There was a shorter one on Jan. 11, 2023, because if an outage in the F.A.A.’s system to alert pilots to safety issues.
The order on Friday halted nearly all departures and stranded thousands of passengers at airports across the country. Hundreds of flights were diverted to other airports and more were canceled, even as some internationally bound flights managed to secure permission to take off. Amid the delays and cancellations, many passengers were taken off flights or told to go home.
More than 2 million people pass through airport security checkpoints on a typical day, according to Transportation Security Administration data. On Thursday, the agency screened nearly 2.5 million people. According to FlightRadar24, an aviation tracking site, there were more than 1,000 airborne aircraft bound for U.S. airports during the nationwide ground stop. According to the flight tracking app Flighty, there were more than 30,000 departures and arrivals scheduled for the remainder of the day.
Passengers waiting to take off Friday afternoon were stuck in limbo.
In the Denver airport, passengers were taken off their flights with their suitcases. A handful began rebooking travel for the next day. But most waited patiently for any kind of update. A Southwest flight attendant announced that the airline expected an update in 30 minutes.
Before the advisory was published, the F.A.A. halted flights to Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports, citing equipment problems, and reported equipment-related departure delays at Newark, Las Vegas, Teterboro, Orlando, Houston and Phoenix.
Here’s what else to know:
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If your flight is canceled: You are entitled to a refund if your flight is canceled in the United States, regardless of the reason, or if a flight is significantly delayed or changed and you decide not to take it. Here are other travel tips that might be helpful. Read more ›
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A busy travel month: The ground stop happened about two weeks before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest times of the year for air travel. On average, U.S. airlines are expected to fly about 2.7 million passengers each day over the holiday period, according to industry trade group Airlines for America.
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The last ground stop: The last nationwide ground stop came in the early morning of Jan. 11, 2023, and lasted around 90 minutes. The disruption came after a system to alert pilots of real-time dangers went down. Read more ›
Christine Chung, Niraj Chokshi, Luke Broadwater, Dustin Volz, Lisa Lerer and Robert Chiarito contributed reporting.
