Nationwide FAA ground stop updates: Air travel improvement for travelers at Chicago Midway, O’Hare with 100+ flight, cancellations

CHICAGO (WLS) — O’Hare and Midway airports are working to get back on track after an FAA ground stop brought flights to a halt and left travelers facing major delays.

Now, airlines are scrambling to clear the backlog, with disruptions rippling through the weekend.

There has been some improvement since Saturday.

As of 5:47 a.m. 117 flights were canceled at O’Hare airport; and 43 cancellations at Midway airport.

FAA officials said they believe the worst is behind us.

On Saturday morning, there were more than 400 cancelled flights in Chicago.

In an update on Saturday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the failure was due to the air traffic control system being overloaded during an upgrade.

On Friday afternoon, the FAA issued a ground stop at airports nationwide. Some passengers were left stranded at airports across the country.

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Airlines have been attempting to rebound since then and get flight schedules back on track.

“I don’t think I want to get on a plane no more after this because I don’t know what’s going on actually,” traveler Gerad Hill said. “They said it was the FAA communications, but I don’t know it really sounds weird.”

Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said he expected the system will be fully recovered by the end of the weekend.

“Based on everything that we’re hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they’ll be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday,” he said.

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Issues were seen in Chicago Friday afternoon before the nationwide ground stop was officially issued.

There was a ground stop at Chicago O’Hare International Airport at 2:10 p.m. because of an equipment outage. Another stop began at Chicago Midway International Airport at 2:17 p.m.

The national ground stop was not issued until 2:54 p.m. CT.

Late Friday night, the city’s aviation department told ABC7, “No Chicago Department of Aviation infrastructure is part of the affected FAA communications systems.”