US air travel issues to persist well into Sunday, officials say, with thousands of flights affected

OVERLOADED COMMUNICATIONS CENTRES

Duffy said the trouble began on Friday afternoon, when air traffic control centres experienced instability in radar and communications systems. The router issue led to data overloading other communications centresofficials said.

“We had over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, and what that did was (it) gave us issues with our communication with airplanes, and it also caused some disruption with our radar,” Duffy added.

The issue affected communications at 17 of the FAA’s 22 en route centerswhich control aircraft during the cruise portion of a flight. Bedford said the FAA ordered the ground stop in case a centre lost all communications. “No facilities went dark. Nothing was fully lost,” Bedford added.

The FAA said it was doing additional testing with L3Harris to see if there are any additional risks.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines all cancelled about 25 per cent of their flights on Saturday, while JetBlue cancelled nearly 45 per cent. Airlines have issued travel waivers allowing passengers to rebook flights for later dates without cost.

Though the FAA lifted the ground stop on Friday evening, the disruption for passengers was far from over, with tens of thousands of people stranded in airports. Airlines were trying to get flight crews and other personnel in position to resume flights.

The disruption stranded some college football teams on Friday before games scheduled for Saturday.