US lifts ground stop, but passengers face second day of flight disruption

More than 1.5 million air passengers have faced travel disruption after the United States halted departing flights nationwide for more than four hours, with airlines warning they would take days to recover.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted the ground stop at 8:15pm Eastern time on Friday (01:15 GMT on Saturday), after a telecommunications outage affected the country’s 22 regional air traffic control centres. FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, with 700 flights already cancelled for Saturday.

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At Los Angeles airport, passenger Nicholas Erdodi, who had travelled from New Zealand to attend a conference in Chicago, told Al Jazeera he had spent six hours at the airport after being forced off his plane.

“The challenge is you cannot ask anyone here what to do,” he said. “The lack of information is what bothers me.” He had been rebooked, but was unsure whether his next flight would go.

Others affected included sports teams in the NBA, NHL and college football.

Todd Curtis, an aviation safety expert and chief executive of AirSafe.com, told Al Jazeera that the failures appeared to be concentrated in the country’s air route traffic control centres.

本文の著作権はAl Jazeeraにあります。