Las Vegas travelers faced another day of flight delays and cancellations Saturday as airlines worked to recover from the nation's longest ground stop in 25 years. The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights across the U.S. for more than four hours starting Friday afternoon, citing an equipment outage that officials said was not a cyber attack.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the outage occurred when a contractor at a remote FAA location was switching telecommunication lines from old copper wire to fiber during routine maintenance. New equipment overloaded old routers, creating communications and radar gaps. Duffy said investigators are determining whether the cause was user error, installer error from L3 Harris, or a faulty router.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford apologized to affected passengers, saying, "I'm sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons." The ground stop stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and disrupted travel for 1.5 million fliers. The FAA expects about 5,000 flight cancellations Saturday, with most operations returning to normal by Sunday night.
Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called the event a "national calamity" and said it highlights the risks of relying on aging infrastructure. Duffy has asked Congress for additional funding to replace outdated systems, using Friday's disruption to renew that request.
Sources: FOX5 Vegas
Original reporting: 8 News Now →
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