US air travel should normalize Sunday after ground stop triggers mass cancellations, FAA says

Airlines canceled thousands of flights across the U.S. on Saturday as they worked to recover from a nationwide ground stop that left passengers scrambling for seats and disrupted travel around the world. The U.S. air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday, two days after what was the nation’s longest ground stop in 25 years, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said, declaring the “worst is behind us.” The problem began when contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was replacing a section of the air traffic control system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire, somehow causing the system to overload, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The work led to “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, prompting the government to shut down air traffic for more than four hours. Officials were investigating whether contractor “incompetence” or a faulty router was the cause,” he said.

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