More than 12,500 flights were canceled in the United States on Friday and Saturday following a technical failure in the air traffic control system. According to FlightAware, the total number of canceled flights reached 12,506, with 9,132 cancellations and 7,030 delayed flights reported on Friday alone. Another 3,374 flights were canceled on Saturday morning, while 1,008 were delayed.
The Federal Aviation Administration imposed a nationwide ground stop on November 13 because of a communications problem that affected multiple regional air traffic control centers. The restriction lasted for more than four hours and was lifted at around 8:15 p.m. local time. According to aviation analytics company Cirium, approximately 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart from U.S. airports after 4:00 p.m. on Friday.
New technology overloaded the old system
U.S. officials said that new technology being deployed in the air traffic control system had overloaded outdated equipment. This caused disruptions to communications and radar coverage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that old switches and routers had been overwhelmed by data. He said the system needed to be completely upgraded and described the incident as an emergency.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that technicians were investigating the failure. There is currently no evidence that the problem was caused by a cyberattack. More than 3,000 aircraft that were in the air when the order was issued landed safely.
Schedule expected to return to normal by Sunday
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that air travel would continue to operate with canceled and delayed flights, but that “the worst is behind us.” He said the schedule should return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The stoppage was the first nationwide flight restriction in the U.S. since January 2023, when a failure in the system used to distribute safety notices to pilots halted takeoffs and affected more than 10,000 flights. The latest outage has once again raised questions about the condition of the U.S. air traffic control infrastructure.
Congress has already approved $12.5 billion for the modernization of telecommunications and radar systems. The president’s administration has requested an additional $30.1 billion in funding, of which $10.1 billion is earmarked for air traffic. Airlines continue to rearrange schedules and reroute passengers, with the effects of the stoppage expected to continue over the coming days.
Sources: apnews.com, goodmorningamerica.com, investing.com