Four-hour halt of US flights paralyzes travel for 1.5 million passengers

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all departing flights from US airports for more than four hours, after a communications failure hit 22 air traffic control centers across the country.

The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time (01:15 GMT Saturday morning). The aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that about 11,000 flights had been scheduled to take off after 4 p.m., carrying more than 1.5 million passengers, while at least 827 flights were forced to change their destination by 7:05 p.m. FlightRadar24 recorded more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, with 700 flights pre-cancelled for Saturday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that restoring full capacity "will take some time," noting that he expects operations to return to normal ahead of the Thanksgiving travel wave, which begins in less than two weeks. He acknowledged that tens of thousands of travelers were stranded at airports. Airlines, meanwhile, warned that the full repositioning of aircraft and crews could take days.

The fallout from the stoppage extended to American sports; five NBA clubs had Friday flights scheduled for Saturday games, in addition to 14 NHL games. The San Jose Sharks remained waiting for their flight to Utah, while the Florida Panthers reached St. Louis before the halt. As for the Texas Longhorns college football team, they boarded the plane before it was stopped, and their spokesman said: "We are stuck and waiting to find out when we take off."

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and JetBlue said they were resuming operations gradually. Air Canada reported that disruptions would likely continue through Saturday. At Mexico City airport, Benito Juárez International Airport indicated that about 70 flights scheduled for Friday could be affected.

At Los Angeles airport, Nicholas Irdoodi, arriving from New Zealand, who spent six hours at the airport after being removed from his plane on his journey to a conference in Chicago and was rebooked on another flight, said that "the challenge is you can't ask anyone here what to do," adding that the lack of information is what bothers him.