American air travel is expected to return to normal on Sunday after a copper-to-wire telecommunication upgrade failure grounded nearly 20,000 flights and left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded worldwide, detikNews reported on Sunday.
The nationwide ground stop on Friday marked only the second time US airspace faced such a sweeping halt since the September 11 attacks, according to reporting by detikNews and the BBC. Transportation authorities lifted the order after four and a half hours, but the ripple effects forced airlines to scrap thousands of subsequent journeys over the weekend.
Copper Cabling to Fiber Optics
The four-hour freeze hit on Friday afternoon as contractor L3Harris worked to modernize decades-old aviation telecommunications networks by swapping legacy copper wiring for high-speed fiber optics, as reported by the BBC. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters that the maintenance work caused a data flood across routers within the air traffic control system.
“Entah karena kesalahan kontraktor atau kerusakan pada peralatan… hal itu menyebabkan gangguan pada perangkat perute lain dalam sistem kendali lalu lintas udara kami,” Duffy told reporters.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) head Bryan Bedford said that thousands of flights were cancelled on Friday alone. FlightAware tracking data subsequently captured more than 6,600 cancellations on Saturday, followed by more than 1,200 additional cancellations by Sunday morning.
“Kami telah kembali beroperasi secara penuh,” Duffy said on Saturday, according to ANTARA News Yogyakarta.
Airports Choked and Passengers Stranded
Crowded departure gates, stationary aircraft lining taxiways, and restless travelers filled terminals across the United States throughout the disruption. Flight schedules faced prolonged recovery periods as carriers attempted to reposition crews and aircraft.
“Lelah. Sangat lelah. Frustrasi. Ya, Anda tahu, situasinya benar-benar kacau, bukan?” Lisa Beraid told AFP at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Saturday morning.
Tim Johnson, consumer director at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said that lingering schedule adjustments would likely persist even after the FAA restored airspace access. Meanwhile, domestic carriers such as Delta Air Lines and United Airlines canceled roughly 20 percent of their scheduled Saturday itineraries, as reported by the BBC.
| Metric / Event | Recorded Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total Affected Flights | Nearly 20,000 | detikNews |
| Friday Cancellations | Thousands | detikNews (FAA) |
| Saturday Cancellations | More than 6,600 | detikNews (FlightAware) |
| Ground Stop Duration | 4.5 Hours | ANTARA / Kompas.id |
Broader Digital Infrastructure Fallout
The telecommunications upgrade failure coincided with wider digital disruptions affecting public and commercial infrastructure across the United States. Amtrak ticket reservation systems, hospital administrative networks, and court services experienced system errors, while Microsoft 365 outages compounded administrative delays in multiple states, AFU.id reported.
Tidak ada alasan bagi masyarakat untuk takut atau mengkhawatirkan orang-orang yang mereka cintai. Ini bukan kejadian seperti 11 September 2001, Mullin stated, according to Kompas.id.
Earlier coverage: US Flights Resume After Nationwide Ground Stop Caused by Communications Outage
