Travel Disruptions Continue After FAA Ground Stop

Air travelers in Chicago and Houston faced more cancellations, delays and missing luggage on November 14, following a nationwide ground stop that lasted nearly five hours on November 13. At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, 283 flights had been canceled and 370 delayed by about 6 p.m.; Midway had 30 cancellations and 15 delays. Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports together saw more than 400 cancellations and hundreds of delays that Saturday.

Some passengers found that replacement flights were also canceled or delayed. Chicago travelers described being stranded for hours and struggling to learn where their checked bags had gone. One passenger trying to get from Miami to Milwaukee said he had been stuck in Nashville and eventually took an overnight Greyhound bus.

In Houston, Allison Grubeet said her group’s flight to Nashville was boarding when the shutdown began. After waiting until midnight, they returned early the next morning, only for their rescheduled flight to be canceled. With the next available flight not until Tuesday, they rented a car and abandoned the trip.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed a contractor, L3 Harris, for problems during work to replace aging copper telecommunications lines with fiber. He said air traffic control routers were overwhelmed by connections, disrupting radar feeds. The FAA administrator said the cause of the instability remained unclear for about 45 minutes before the ground stop was ordered. Duffy said the incident was not a cyberattack and was unrelated to a Microsoft outage earlier in the week.

The FAA said 70% of the communications system had been upgraded to fiber. Duffy said investigators were examining what happened and expected travel to return to normal Sunday, while Houston airport disruptions were expected to continue through Monday. The Trump administration is seeking $50 billion from Congress to modernize the system.