Four-hour US flight halt paralyses travel for 1.5 million passengers

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

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

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

The fallout from the stoppage extended to American sport; five NBA teams had Friday flights scheduled for Saturday games, as well as 14 NHL games. The San Jose Sharks remained waiting for their flight to Utah, while the Florida Panthers reached St. Louis before the halt. The Texas Longhorns college football team boarded its plane before the halt, and its spokesman said: "We are being held and waiting to find out when we will depart."

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

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