The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted a nationwide ground stop in the US, but that has not ended the disruption. Passengers travelling to and from the country were still facing delays and cancellations on Saturday morning, Euronews reported, after Friday’s halt over what the FAA called a “telecommunications outage.”
The agency said some departures were resuming after it had “thoroughly tested” its systems and confirmed they were stable. That is the formal change. The more useful fact for anyone trying to get somewhere is that large parts of the flight schedule were still not back to normal.
US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the stoppage exposed an “incredibly old” air traffic control system and warned that recovery would be slow. “Now does that mean every flight is going to fly? Right now, it’s going to be slow,” he told reporters after saying the airspace had reopened at 8:15pm Eastern time.
FlightAware said more than 8,860 flights to or from the US were cancelled on Friday, with about 2,650 more cancelled so far on Saturday. Flightradar24’s airport disruption map also showed major problems across US airports on Saturday morning.
United Airlines, Delta and American said they were resuming operations. American said late on Friday that it was focused on operating as many remaining flights as possible while positioning for “the strongest possible recovery in the days ahead.”
For travellers, the distinction is plain enough: the stop has been lifted, but the service is still broken in thousands of places. The FAA’s advice was to check directly with airlines for updates.
Dua Mifsud 
Marcus Azzopardi 
Sophia Borg 