More Than 6,370 Flights Canceled Saturday as FAA Says ‘Full Recovery’ Won’t Come Until Late Sunday

More than 6,370 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday and nearly 7,930 were delayed as of 8:44 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware, as airlines tried to recover from Friday’s nationwide ground stop. Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said he does not expect full schedules to return until late Sunday.

The disruption followed about 9,200 cancellations and 7,500 delays Friday, after the FAA halted departures nationwide for more than four hours, as Conservative Daily News reported. It was the longest nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Reuters reported.

Travelers flying Sunday should still expect cancellations and delays. FlightAware already listed more than 800 canceled flights within, into or out of the United States for Sunday. Bedford told reporters Saturday that airlines “will still have delays and cancellations” as they move crews and aircraft back into place, but that “will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow.” He said carriers believe they will have “full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday,” and that the “worst is behind us,” according to the Associated Press and Mediaite.

“I’m sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons,” Bedford said, according to Mediaite.

The FAA said Saturday afternoon that “the system is stable and we’re returning to normal operations,” and told passengers to check flight status with their airline and to watch airport updates. Major airlines have issued travel waivers allowing passengers to rebook without extra fees, Reuters reported.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines each canceled about 25% of their Saturday flights, while JetBlue canceled nearly 45%, Reuters reported. Tens of thousands of passengers were left stranded as airlines tried to get crews and planes back in position.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Saturday blamed the outage on routine maintenance by FAA contractor L3Harris, which was switching old copper telecommunications lines to fiber at a remote facility. He said a router began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting communications with aircraft and radar feeds, according to a Department of Transportation transcript of the briefing.

“We’re working to determine whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven’t determined what the fault was,” Duffy said. L3Harris said it is supporting the FAA’s investigation, CNBC reported. Officials said they saw no evidence of a cyberattack.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Fox News on Saturday that Congress should put more money into the system rather than open an investigation. “We don’t really need any investigation to understand we need further investment,” Johnson said on Fox’s Saturday in America. “Some of this equipment dates back to the ’80s, and it needs to be updated. We’re going to work to get it done,” Mediaite reported.

House Democrats slated to lead the Transportation Committee next year, Reps. Rick Larsen and Andre Carson, said their panels will “hold the administration accountable for what happened to make sure this chaos does not happen again,” Reuters reported. Duffy on Friday asked Congress for $50 billion to replace aging air traffic equipment, as Conservative Daily News reported.

The backlog comes less than a week before the Thanksgiving travel period, when nearly 29 million people are expected to fly on U.S. airlines between Nov. 20 and Nov. 30, according to industry group Airlines for America.

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