5 things to know on the FAA groundings

This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. End of dialog window. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has air traffic control systems back online after a major telecommunications outage grounded all U. S. flights Friday evening. The delay stranded passengers across the country and forced airlines to delay or cancel thousands of flights, a disruption that may take days to get back to normal. Those affected included everyday passengers, but also college football teams traveling to big matchups for Saturday. Government officials have initially identified old equipment as the reason for the failure and have requested additional funding to modernize air traffic control systems. Here are five things to know about the nationwide ground stop. Nearly 4,000 flights within, into or out of the U. S. were delayed as of late Saturday morning, and more than 4,300 have been canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Those delays and cancellations have only increased throughout the morning, and are concentrated at the busiest airports. Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport remain the three with the most disruptions. Fifteen percent of all flights in Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport, have been canceled, with another nearly 20 percent delayed. Twenty percent of flights out of JFK have been canceled. Airlines have begun accommodating passengers whose flights were disrupted. All four of the major airlines — Delta, United, Southwest and American — are waiving change fees for affected passengers, and Delta, United and Southwest are waiving fare differences to allow customers to change their flights at no additional cost. At a press conference Saturday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that a wire switch may have caused the telecommunications outage. Duffy said a contractor called L3Harris was replacing an old copper wire with a new fiber cable, and that the FAA was investigating to see if that was the cause. “So what we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?” Duffy said. “We haven’t determined what the fault was.” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency has not identified any evidence of malice, such as a cyberattack. “We see zero evidence of anything nefarious. It is an equipment issue,” Bedford told reporters. “When we have this root-cause analysis complete we will share it with you.” The travel disruptions hit right as college football teams were preparing to take off for anticipated Saturday matchups. Games in the Big 12, Big Ten and Southeastern Conference were delayed Saturday, in some cases by several hours, due to the disruptions. The Ole Miss-Oklahoma game was moved to Sunday afternoon. In the NFL, the league updated its officiating assignments to keep officials within driving distance of their homes amid the flight disruptions. At a joint press conference Friday night with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Duffy asked Congress to pass more than $50 billion in funding for modernizing air traffic control systems in the U. S. “I want $50 billion,” Duffy told reporters. “Let’s finish this job: new hardware, new software, new telecommunication.” Duffy has made a big push to modernize the FAA and air traffic control systems in his role as transportation secretary, pointing to decades-old systems that rely on old technology. Mullin echoed Duffy’s claims, calling for a “complete overhaul of the system.” The transportation secretary shared his message to members of Congress. “Give President Trump — give Duffy the money. Let them finish this job so we don’t have to do a press conference at 8:30 at night ever again,’” Duffy said. As federal officials say they are investigating the cause of Friday’s incident, a key House Democrat is raising questions. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the likely next chair of the House Oversight Committee, called the ground stop “quite disturbing” in an interview on MS NOW Friday. “Whatever it is, I think deserves as much transparency as possible,” Garcia said. The California Democrat has already pledged to investigate the president and his allies, which the White House vowed to aggressively respond to. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N. Y.), the likely candidate for Speaker of the House, released a statement accusing the administration of “failed leadership.” “American travelers deserve timely answers from the Trump Administration about how and why this happened and assurances that steps are being taken to ensure that our air travel system remains safe and functional,” Jeffries said. Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.