US flights recover as FAA expects normal schedules by late Sunday

WASHINGTON: US flights recover as air travel across the United States slowly gets back to normal. The head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Bryan Bedford, has said schedules should be fully restored by late on Sunday, although thousands of passengers still faced delays and cancellations through the day.

Sunday still disrupted, but far better
FlightAware counted 1,421 cancellations and 1,573 delays on flights within, into or out of the United States on Sunday. That is a sharp improvement on Friday, when about 9,200 flights were cancelled, and Saturday, when more than 6,400 were cancelled and over 8,000 delayed. Bedford apologised to American travellers at a news conference in Washington on Saturday, saying the system remained stable.

What caused the chaos
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the trouble began when contractor L3Harris was replacing an old copper telecommunications line with fibre cable at a remote facility, and a newly installed router began flooding the air traffic control network. Communications and radar feeds were disrupted at 17 of the FAA’s 22 en route centres, forcing a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon that lasted almost five hours — the longest such halt since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Officials say there is no sign of a cyberattack, and a formal investigation is under way.

What happens next
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said flights between the UK and the US had resumed, but warned of follow-on disruption while airlines rebook passengers and move aircraft and crews back into position. Air India said its US flights were operating on schedule. Duffy has asked for $50 billion to modernise the air traffic control system, and the blame game over who pays for the failure has already begun in Washington.