FAA Chief Promises Full Flight Recovery by Sunday After National Suspension

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Saturday that air traffic across the United States would be fully restored by the end of the day. He noted that delays and cancellations would continue on Saturday but declared that the worst of the disruption had passed. The agency is working to resolve a four-hour national ground stop that left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.

Government officials stated that new technology being added to the national air traffic control system overloaded older equipment. This caused intermittent interruptions in communications and radar. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters that planes were taking off and landing on Saturday. He added that the system should return to normal operation in time for the peak travel period for Thanksgiving.

Andrew Charlton, a consultant for aviation advocacy group Aviation Advocacy, said the Friday suspension affected about a quarter of the 45,000 daily flights in the US. Charlton explained that the domino effect is severe because planes do not simply fly from one city to another. Aircraft continue to other destinations, and the problem worsens with long-haul international flights over the Atlantic or Pacific.

FlightAware data showed that more than 4,100 flights were canceled, while Cirium reported the number exceeded 3,200. In Dallas, Southwest Airlines agents greeted passengers at Love Field on Saturday morning. They informed travelers that all flights were full and asked them to have boarding passes ready to speed up the process. Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours at the Dallas airport on Friday before giving up on a flight to Columbus, Ohio.

Teams in various sports leagues adjusted their schedules in response to the disruption. The No. 19 Mississippi football team delayed its game in Oklahoma by a full day until Sunday. Other games had their start times pushed back by several hours. At Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, a plane sat on the runway for four hours on Friday. Passenger Corbyn Wascher, a 37-year-old high school teacher from Moline, Illinois, paid $100 for an Uber to a hotel 25 minutes away after finding no flight until Saturday afternoon.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said no one was in danger during the suspension. He noted that more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the order landed safely. Duffy blamed Congress for not approving more funding for new technologies. He suggested that similar episodes could happen again. The FAA has replaced thousands of old copper cables with fiber optic lines and modernized hundreds of radio systems since Congress approved $12.5 billion in funds last year. The administration is now seeking an additional $30 billion to complete the work.