US officials say flight stoppage stemmed from ‘routine maintenance’ as travel chaos continues

Key Points:

• The FAA's four-hour nationwide ground stop on Friday, causing thousands of flight delays and cancellations, was attributed to routine maintenance involving switching telecommunications lines from copper wire to fiber optic cable, according to US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
• The disruption was linked to either user or installer error or faulty equipment at a remote FAA facility, with no evidence found of cyber-attacks or nefarious activity; the FAA head, Bryan Bedford, apologized and expected full schedule recovery by Sunday.
• The federal contractor L3Harris, responsible for the air traffic control equipment update, stated it had completed over 70% of the planned conversion and is cooperating with the FAA investigation into the ground stop.
• The incident caused widespread travel chaos, with over 8,000 cancellations on Friday and more than 4,000 on Saturday, affecting sports events and major airports across the US, with airlines like American and Delta warning of ongoing delays.
• Trump administration officials called for Congress to fully fund a new air traffic control system, highlighting the current system's outdated infrastructure and telecommunications as a contributing factor to the failure.