Airport chaos continues after US ground stop lifted – as it happened

Key events

Closing summary

We’re wrapping up this live coverage of the US ground stop and travel chaos that followed – it’s just passed 12.50am in Washington DC. Below’s a rundown on what happened, and you can read a full report here. Thanks for being with us.

• The Federal Aviation Administration declared a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, throwing airports into sudden chaos, after a communications failure at air traffic control centres.

• More than 6,600 flights were cancelled and 8,600 delayed, with another 1,500 already cancelled for Sunday, according to FlightRadar24. Aviation analysts said the four-hour nationwide grounding could disrupt airline ⁠schedules for days. It was the longest flight shutdown since the attacks of September 11 2001.

• The FAA lifted the ground stop later on Friday, with transportation secretary Sean Duffy saying US airspace reopened at 8.15pm ET (0115 GMT). But departures would ⁠resume gradually and it would take ​time for airlines to restore normal operations, he warned. “It’s going to be slow.”

Passengers queue at a terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport in Georgia after the FAA’s ground stop. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

• All US-bound departures from European airports are suspended until 5am UTC on Saturday, according to a notice published by the European traffic control agency, Eurocontrol.

• US airlines including American, United and Southwest began resuming flights on Friday night. “Thank you for your understanding as we work as quickly as possible to fully restore normal operations,” Delta said.

• Duffy said the federal government had “identified the problem” that brought down the US air traffic control system on Friday and it was “operational right now”. The system was “incredibly old”, he said. “Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”

• There was no indication from preliminary investigations that the communications stoppage was tied to a “nefarious attack”, homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said.

• Duffy blamed Congress for failing to fund a new air traffic control system that he said could prevent such outages, and called for $50bn to modernize it.

US airport chaos continues – in pictures

Here are some of the latest images coming in from US airports as the disruption from the FAA’s nationwide ground stop continues while some airlines slowly start resuming flights.

Aeroline’s workers check in passengers while some aircraft remain grounded on Friday at Miami international airport, Florida. Photograph: Cristóbal Herrera/EPA

An Alaska Airlines employee listens to stranded passengers at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport in Virginia during the ground stop, which has now been lifted. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Passengers in Miami international airport’s waiting area. Photograph: Cristóbal Herrera/EPA

Planes are parked on the tarmac at LaGuardia airport in New York amid the flight ban. Photograph: Ryan Murphy/AP

Airplane luggage from cancelled flights piles up at Reagan national airport outside Washington DC.
Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

A person looks at a flight information board at LaGuardia airport in New York. Photograph: Ryan Murphy/AP

Passengers search for information using their phones at Chicago O’Hare international airport. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/AFP/Getty Images

Just to recap, travel plans were thrown into chaos across the US on Friday afternoon as passengers on planes and in airport terminals were suddenly thrust into limbo due to the nationwide ground stop.

Even now that the stoppage has been lifted, airlines will not be able to return to normal operations immediately because so many of their planes and crews are out of position.

At New York’s John F Kennedy airport, passengers found their travel plans abruptly cancelled – some even after they’d boarded, reports Edward Helmore in New York. Steve Honberger, heading home to Portland, Oregon, with his wife and daughter, said he’d been on a plane about to take off when the shutdown was announced.

They didn’t seem to know what’s happening, and they wanted to hold off as long as possible.

The plane sat at the gate for an hour and 40 minutes.

Travellers with children rest on the floor at JFK airport during the ground stop. Photograph: Olga Fedorova/EPA

Delta has also said it is restarting flights, posting on social media:

The FAA-mandated ground stop has been lifted and we are safely resuming flights. Thank you for your understanding as we work as quickly as possible to fully restore normal operations.

Southwest Airlines said it was resuming a limited number of flights on Friday evening after consulting with the FAA.

The airline would “continue to adjust our plans as needed”, it said.

Airlines start resuming flights after ban lifted

US airlines have slowly begun resuming flights on Friday night after the FAA-mandated ground stop was lifted.

United Airlines said it was resuming operations, “including some Friday night flights”.

“Safety is our highest priority as we take care of our customers and employees,” the airline said in a post to X.

Travellers wait at a United terminal at Los Angeles international airport on Friday amid the flight disruptions. Photograph: Ethan Swope/AP

American Airlines says it will operate as many flights as possible on Friday night and aim for a strong recovery from the disruption.

The airline posted on social media:

The FAA’s nationwide ground stop has been lifted. We’re focused on operating as many remaining flights as possible this evening while positioning the airline for the strongest possible recovery in the days ahead.

It advised cutomers to check the status of their flights on the airline’s app or website.

All US-bound departures from European airports are suspended until 5am UTC on Saturday, according to a notice published by the European traffic control agency, Eurocontrol.

Forty-two European countries are members of Eurocontrol, including the 27 EU countries, the UK, Turkey and Israel.

The notice, issued by Network Manager Operations Centre Brussels at 10pm UTC, has been made on request of the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Looking in the opposite direction, however, several planes bound for Europe – including Dublin, Copenhagen, London, Milan, Paris and Rome – were allowed to depart from airports in Boston, New York and Washington in the past two hours.

The Vaclav Havel airport in Prague, Czech Republic. Photograph: Michal Čížek/AFP/Getty Images

Ben Doherty, a Guardian Australia reporter, is currently on a plane at Sydney airport, waiting to fly to the US. He writes:

US-bound flights out of Sydney in Australia have been held on the tarmac, some for up to three hours. Flights are being gradually cleared for departure after being held in Australia by the FAA out of concern planes would not be able to land once they reached the US.

Our flight has had to take on extra fuel after running the air-conditioning (needed for a plane full of people) for several hours while waiting for clearance.

It’s 13 hours from Sydney to LAX. We’ve been on board for three hours so far, haven’t yet moved, but about to taxi shortly.

It’s not been too bad. We’ve been kept informed by the captain, but the messages have reflected the uncertainty over this incident.

We were delayed, and then boarding was brought forward, reinstated at the original time. We were granted clearance to leave, but then this was rescinded. Even from a distance of 12,000 kilometres, the impacts of this are being felt.

Planes at Sydney international airport in a file shot. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

What we know so far about the US flight fiasco that's grounded thousands of planes nationwide

If you’re just joining us, we’re continuing our live coverage of the major systems failure that led US aviation officials to ground flights nationwide for more than four hours on Friday. That continues to cause chaos for thousands of air travelers across the US and the world.

Here is what we know about the rare nationwide “ground stop” issued by the FAA that was in place from just before 4pm Eastern Time in the US until 8.15 pm.

• Outages in communication, radio frequencies and radar began in Chicago, according to the Air Current, an aviation news site.

• There is, as of now, no clear explanation of what, exactly, caused the “telecommunications outage” that forced the sudden halt to all departures at US airports.

• According to the tracing site FlightAware, 8,553 flights were delayed on Friday, and there were 6,816 cancelled flights.

• While Donald Trump was uncharacteristically silent throughout the crisis, his secretaries of transportation and homeland security, Sean Duffy and Markwayne Mullin, appeared to suggest that the cause of the outage was that older technology became overwhelmed with data after new technology was introduced by the FAA.

• Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator now leading the US Department of Homeland Security, said “we’ve seen zero evidence that this was a cyber-attack.”

• This is just the second nationwide ​ground stop of all departures since the 9/11 attacks. The previous one came in January 2023, when the FAA paused all ⁠domestic departures for less than two hours.

• As disruptions ripple through the global aviation system, we will continue to track the impact of the outage, and look for answers as to what, exactly, went wrong.