FAA expects recovery, but over 1,200 flights cancelled on Sunday – What caused the US flight chaos?

US air travel was expected to return to normal on Sunday (Nov 15), but the disruption caused by a nationwide ground stop continued to leave passengers stranded, with airlines facing the task of clearing a massive backlog of flights.

The scale of the disruption was significant. FAA chief Bryan Bedford said 12,000 flights were cancelled on Friday, while FlightAware recorded more than 6,600 cancellations on Saturday. By Sunday morning, another 1,200-plus flights had been cancelled.

Bedford told a news conference in Washington that he expected flight schedules to be fully restored by the “close of business on Sunday”. However, the recovery could take longer for passengers waiting to be rebooked.

What caused the FAA shutdown?

The Trump administration blamed Friday’s four-hour ground stop on a problem during work to replace ageing copper communication lines with high-speed fibre cables.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the maintenance work disrupted communications with aircraft and radar feeds. Explaining the suspected failure, he said: “Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment... it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system.”

The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 pm Eastern Time on Friday after the FAA restored functionality at air traffic control facilities. But the knock-on effects continued, with airlines working through cancellations and delays.

Passengers stranded as infrastructure concerns grow

At New York’s LaGuardia airport, frustrated travellers described long waits and uncertainty. “Tired. Exhausted. Frustrated. Yeah, you know, it’s just a mess, right?” passenger Lisa Beraid told AFP.

The disruption has also renewed questions about the condition of US air traffic infrastructure. Duffy called for $50 billion to modernise the system, urging Congress to provide funding.

The incident prompted calls for investigations from lawmakers, including questions about the reliability and security of the country's air traffic control network. Officials have not established that the outage was caused by a cyberattack.