Follow-up: U.S. Flight Disruptions Enter Third Day With 1,600 Sunday Cancellations; Duffy Says Fully Normal by Monday

U.S. flight disruptions entered a third day on November 15. More than 5,200 flights nationwide had already been affected on Sunday, with more than 1,600 canceled and almost 3,600 delayed, according to aviation data site FlightAware; on Saturday airlines canceled more than 6,400 U.S. flights and delayed more than 8,000. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on ABC's "This Week" that flights would come back to normal on Sunday "but probably fully normal" on Monday, pushing the full-recovery timeline back from the Federal Aviation Administration's earlier expectation of Sunday evening.

Duffy said there is no evidence of a cyberattack or other malicious intent, but the cause remained unclear. He said the replacement of a router at an FAA facility in El Dorado, Arkansas, triggered problems with a recently replaced router in Amarillo, Texas, which started broadcasting and overloading routers at other air traffic control centers across the country. The FAA has disabled the functionality of the originating routers and did the same for about 60 similar routers in the air traffic control system. "The worker who installed the router was a good American patriot, we believe, a veteran — so we don't think that someone tried to sabotage the network on the install," Duffy said. "But we don't actually have the root cause." He said the routers that experienced issues were purchased in 2001 and were obsolete by 2006.

The disruption began with the FAA's nationwide ground stop on Friday, November 13, which halted nearly all departing flights for almost five hours — the longest nationwide halt to U.S. air travel since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Cancellation rates diverged sharply on Sunday: 27% of JetBlue flights and 13% of American Airlines flights were canceled, with Southwest, United and Delta reporting cancellations of 3% to 5% of their flights.

President Donald Trump on Sunday made his first public comments on the weekend's air travel issues, writing on social media: "We have already started the work, but it should be done all at once, not in drips and drabs. Congress must approve." Since Friday Duffy has called for $50 billion in funding to upgrade air traffic control systems, up from his earlier request of $30 billion; Congress approved $12.5 billion last year. Representatives Rick Larsen and André Carson, the top Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and its aviation subcommittee, said in a statement on Saturday that about $11 billion of the $12.5 billion approved in 2025 remains unspent, asking, "Explain to Congress, again, why they need more money?" Duffy said on Sunday that the money allocated last year was earmarked only for certain spending and does not include funds for new software to manage the airspace.

Related: Follow-up: Ground-Stop Fallout Winds Down as Saturday Cancellations Top 6,400

Source: Reuters

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：停靠在 Los Angeles 国际机场登机口的达美航空客机（资料图）。David Aughinbaugh II 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Delta Air Lines aircraft at the gates at Los Angeles International Airport (file photo). By David Aughinbaugh II, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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