A single router swap froze the world’s busiest airspace for four hours; Pakistanis connecting through Gulf and European hubs are caught in the backlog.
LAHORE: Air travel across the United States was edging back to normal on Sunday, two days after a failed equipment change forced regulators to halt every departure in the country, cancelling thousands of flights and leaving passengers stranded from New York to Los Angeles.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the nationwide ground stop shortly before 4 p.m. Eastern time on Friday and lifted it at about 8:15 p.m., a halt of more than four hours that ran from roughly 1:54 a.m. to 6:15 a.m. on Saturday in Pakistan.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said contractor L3Harris was replacing a router as part of a switch from copper lines to fibre when the device began flooding other routers in the air traffic control network with data. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the flood lasted about 45 minutes and that, unable to explain the instability quickly, the agency stopped departures to take pressure off the system.
About 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the order came, and all landed safely. Bedford said there was “zero evidence of anything nefarious”, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said nothing pointed to a cyberattack. Investigators have yet to establish whether the router was faulty or wrongly installed, and L3Harris said it was supporting the inquiry.
It was the first nationwide ground stop since a computer failure in January 2023. Before that, the last was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Flight-tracking service FlightAware logged about 9,160 cancellations and 7,190 delays on Friday, according to CBS News, and more than 5,000 further cancellations on Saturday as airlines struggled to get crews and aircraft back into position. Only a few dozen to 160 flights had been scrubbed for Sunday by Saturday afternoon, and Bedford predicted a full recovery by the end of the day.
Delta let passengers rebook free of charge, United waived change fees and fare differences for travel through Nov. 20, and American added seats and capped fares.
Duffy blamed “an incredibly old air traffic control system” and the administration raised its modernisation request to $50 billion, on top of a $12.5 billion down payment already approved. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said he “must resign”, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the episode the latest in a series of unacceptable air travel incidents.
No Pakistani airline flies to the United States, so the disruption does not touch Lahore’s own departures. The exposure is indirect: Pakistanis bound for American cities travel through Gulf, Turkish and European hubs, and those with onward domestic connections inside the US, or with relatives flying home for the winter wedding season, face rebooked legs and missed links while airlines clear the backlog.
Travellers should check the status of every sector, not just the first, before leaving for the airport, and keep in mind the waiver dates offered by US carriers.
The episode is also a reminder of how fragile shared aviation systems can be. In September, a UK system glitch and the Iran-US standoff grounded dozens of Pakistan flights in a single day.
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