US air travel resumes after ground stop blamed on copper wiring
The FAA said 12,000 flights were cancelled on Friday and that schedules should be back to normal by Sunday evening.
Flights resumed at US airports on Saturday after a four-hour nationwide ground stop halted every departure the previous evening, with the Trump administration blaming the shutdown on a botched upgrade of old copper wiring and warning that cancellations would run into Sunday.
The halt was lifted at 8:15pm Eastern Time on Friday (0115 GMT Saturday), Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. It was the second time a nationwide stoppage had been ordered in US airspace since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Duffy said the order followed maintenance work to replace an old copper wire with high-speed fibre cable, which caused problems with communications to aircraft and radar feeds. "Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment... it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system," he told reporters in Washington, according to Arab News.
Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford said 12,000 flights were cancelled on Friday and that between 4,000 and 5,000 of the 41,000 scheduled for Saturday were likely to go. By Saturday evening the tracking site FlightAware had recorded more than 6,200 cancellations, Arab News reported. Bedford offered what he called a sincere apology to the American travelling public and predicted a full resumption by "close of business on Sunday".
Hundreds of thousands of passengers were left waiting, some pulled off planes moments before departure by airline staff who appeared not to know what was happening, according to the accounts carried by The Japan Times and South China Morning Post. At New York's La Guardia airport, Lisa Beraid, 48, an insurance company employee, told AFP: "Tired. Exhausted. Frustrated. Yeah, you know, it's just a mess, right?" Pat Curlett, 62, a Ford worker, said he expected to be stuck for about 36 hours.
Duffy used the news conference to appeal for $50bn to modernise the air traffic control system and urged Congress to "meet this moment". Illinois governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, replied on X: "Cut the crap. Trump and Republicans have controlled Congress and could have funded the system." New York governor Kathy Hochul called on Duffy to resign or be dismissed, writing that it was fortunate no lives were lost. Republican Senator Eric Schmitt said the episode showed the system and airport infrastructure needed rebuilding. President Donald Trump made no public statement about the stoppage as of Saturday night, Arab News reported.
The news conference itself was delayed by technical problems with the audio feed. Tim Johnson, consumer director at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said there could be "some follow-on disruption" as airlines rebooked passengers and restored services.
How the reports differ
The Straits Times carried only the administration's attribution, running a single line saying the repair of old copper wiring caused the disruption. South China Morning Post built its report around the transport chief, framing the cause as faulty equipment or an error by the contractor switching out the copper lines. The Japan Times led with the chaos for passengers, its standfirst saying hundreds of thousands were left in limbo. Arab News carried the fullest account, with the cancellation figures, Duffy's $50bn funding appeal, calls from governors Hochul and Pritzker for accountability, and the detail that Trump had said nothing publicly.
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