U.S. flight ground stop lifted but travel chaos lingers across North America

WASHINGTON · A nationwide ground stop that halted all flights in the United States for hours has been lifted, but the travel chaos it created is expected to last through the weekend. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued the order Friday afternoon due to a communications failure affecting air traffic control centres. The FAA lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET, but by then thousands of flights had been cancelled or delayed across North America, with ripple effects felt at major Canadian airports.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem stemmed from ageing network equipment that became overloaded. "It's an old system that went down, and went down everywhere. It got overloaded," Duffy said at a White House briefing. He warned that operations would resume slowly as airlines work to reposition aircraft and crews. "It's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon," he said.

The disruption caused massive backlogs. Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 reported more than 150 delayed flights and 69 cancellations at Vancouver International Airport as of 7 p.m. PT. Toronto Pearson International Airport suspended all flights to and from the U.S., and YYC Calgary International Airport cancelled all U.S.-bound departures. NAV Canada, which oversees Canadian air traffic control, said some delays would continue while operations return to normal.

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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the failure was an attack. "The public was never (in) danger through this process," Mullin said. "There was never any lives at risk. There was no flights at risk." He described it as a telecommunications problem. The failure is believed to have originated in a network router at Chicago Midway International Airport before cascading across the country, according to CNN.

Aviation experts said the scale of the disruption was unprecedented since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It's not as bad as 9/11, but it's still a major, major disruption. You are going to have hundreds of thousands of people whose trips will be interrupted tonight," said John Gradek, an aviation management professor at McGill University. He noted the problem affected the whole of North American airspace, as many international flights transit through U.S. airspace.

Duffy blamed Congress for failing to fund modernization of the air traffic control system, calling for $50 billion to upgrade it. He said the Department of Transportation had earlier this week requested $30.1 billion for infrastructure upgrades. "This is what happens when Congress kicks it down the road," Duffy said. The only other nationwide ground stop since 2001 occurred in January 2023 when a pilot notification system failed.

The immediate impact on travellers was severe. FlightRadar24 reported more than 6,600 flights cancelled and 8,600 delayed within, into, or out of the U.S. on Friday, with another 1,500 already cancelled for Saturday. Airlines are not required to compensate passengers because the carriers were not responsible for the FAA system failure. Air Canada told passengers that flights to and from the Caribbean and South America may also be impacted, and offered free rebooking for affected customers on certain dates.

Duncan Dee, a former Air Canada chief operating officer, said the ground stop would have a ripple effect. "So airlines are going to have to reassemble their schedules not knowing what's going to happen over the next few hours," Dee said. He supported the FAA's decision, saying it likely meant both main and backup systems had failed. The failure comes just days after the FAA expanded its use of artificial intelligence with a new cloud-based management system.

With files from Vancouver Sun, CBC News and CityNews