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Thousands of US flights still cancelled or delayed two days after grounding of planes nationwide

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The travel chaos stemmed from a Friday outage caused by a newly installed computer router in Arkansas that flooded the system with faulty signals during a fiber upgrade. The resulting four-and-a-half-hour ground stop disrupted domestic networks as well as international flight schedules connecting to the United Kingdom and Europe. On Sunday alone, carriers suffered over 5,000 delays and 2,000 cancellations while trying to restore regular timetables. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy emphasized that recurring breakdowns are inevitable without comprehensive updates to the nation's flight systems.

Key points

  • Full restoration of normal flight operations across the United States is not anticipated…: Full restoration of normal flight operations across the United States is not anticipated before Monday.
  • International air schedules in Europe and the United Kingdom were disrupted as a conseque…: International air schedules in Europe and the United Kingdom were disrupted as a consequence of the American system failure.
  • President Donald Trump and transportation officials urged Congress to finance a comprehen…: President Donald Trump and transportation officials urged Congress to finance a comprehensive overhaul of 50-year-old air-traffic infrastructure.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

- Published

Thousands of US flights were cancelled or delayed on Sunday as the US air-traffic control system continued to recover from a technical failure that led to a rare national ground stop.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said normal operations may not be restored until Monday.

"We have airplanes and crews that are out of position, so it takes a little bit of time," he told the BBC's US partner CBS. More than 5,000 flights were delayed and 2,000 cancelled on Sunday.

President Donald Trump urged Congress on Sunday to approve more money to modernise the air-traffic control system. The grounding of all aircraft scheduled to depart the US on Friday caused chaos at airports across the country.

More than 3,500 airplanes were in the air when the FAA announced at 15:54 EST (20:54 GMT) that flights would be grounded until further notice. Some were diverted to other airports and others flew on to their destinations.

In the aftermath, 8,500 flights were delayed and another 8,000 cancelled, according to FlightAware.

The stoppage left passengers stuck inside planes on the…

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