Flight halt in the United States extended by a day
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Vanguard
Hundreds more flights have been cancelled in the United States after a takeoff ban, which authorities attribute to faulty work on air traffic control communication cables. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expects airspace to return to normal today, but says the situation will only be fully restored tomorrow, according to Vanguard.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday morning on ABC News that airspace would return to normal during the day, but that full traffic would only return to normal on Monday, as aircraft and crews had been poorly positioned since Friday. According to the FlightAware website, 1,460 flights within, arriving at or departing from the United States were cancelled on Sunday morning.
Bryan Bedford, head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), had said on Saturday that a return to normal would come before the end of Sunday. Sean Duffy rejected calls for his resignation, claiming he had inherited an outdated air traffic control infrastructure, with radar equipment dating from the 1960s.
Friday’s outage on 13 November, which led to the cancellation of 12,000 flights, was blamed by the Trump administration on a botched replacement of old communication lines with copper cables. This halt is only the second time since 11 September 2001 that a ground stop has been ordered in US airspace.
