More than 4,000 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday, Nov. 14, as airlines worked to recover from a nationwide FAA ground stop ordered the day before after a communications network failure disrupted air-traffic information.
The FAA ordered the stop at 3:54 p.m. Eastern on Friday, citing safety concerns after communication problems affected several air traffic control centers. It lifted the restriction at 8:15 p.m., after nearly five hours. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said updates to an older system during contractor L3Harris' work at a remote site came before the failure.
He said a router sent too much data and overwhelmed other network equipment. The disruption made radar and communications information unstable. Officials stopped departures as a precaution.
By Saturday morning, FlightAware had logged more than 3,700 cancellations and nearly 2,000 delays. The cancellation total topped 4,000 later in the day. Officials said they had found no evidence of a cyberattack.
The exact cause was still under investigation. Airlines faced a difficult recovery because aircraft and crews had been displaced. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said delays and cancellations would continue.
He said schedules were expected to recover by Sunday.