SEA TAC, Wash. — Travelers flying through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are still facing cancellations and delays Saturday as airlines work to recover from a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop that halted departures across the country for more than four hours Friday.
As of Saturday afternoon, at least 132 departures from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had been canceled, and 126 were delayed, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.
The disruption is expected to continue throughout Saturday even though the FAA says the technical problem that triggered Friday’s shutdown has been resolved.
“We are back at full operations,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a Saturday morning news conference.
But getting the air travel system running normally again is not as simple as restarting flights.
Airlines now have to reposition aircraft, pilots, and flight attendants who ended up in the wrong places when thousands of flights were canceled or couldn’t depart Friday.
Duffy warned travelers Saturday morning that they would “continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition aircraft/crews where they are needed most.”
That means a traveler’s flight Saturday could still be affected even though the nationwide ground stop itself ended Friday night.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 of roughly 41,000 scheduled flights nationwide on Saturday could be canceled as airlines reset operations.
“The worst is behind us,” Bedford said Saturday. “We will still have delays and cancellations today, but that will set us up for full recovery tomorrow.”
He said airlines believe they can return to their full schedules by the end of Sunday.
For passengers flying through SEA Saturday, that makes checking directly with their airline particularly important before heading to the airport. SEA’s own flight-status page cautions that its information is approximate and directs passengers to their airline for exact flight times.
What caused the nationwide ground stop?
Federal officials provided more information Saturday about what went wrong.
During the morning news conference, Duffy said a contractor was performing routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility as part of work to replace old copper telecommunications lines with fiber optic cables.
According to Duffy, a router involved in that work began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system, making more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. The resulting overload interfered with communications and radar information reaching air traffic control facilities.
Investigators are now trying to determine whether the failure was caused by human error, an installation problem or defective equipment.
“What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning, was it user error, installer error from L3 Harris, or did they install a faulty router,” Duffy said.
Officials said they have found no evidence that the disruption resulted from a cyberattack or artificial intelligence.
Officials warned Friday another outage could not be ruled out
The new information comes after federal officials acknowledged Friday that they could not guarantee another disruption would not occur.
As KIRO 7 reported Friday, Duffy pointed to the age of the country’s air traffic control technology while the cause of the failure was still under investigation and said there was no guarantee a scenario like Friday’s would not happen again.
Passengers whose flights are canceled should check with their individual airlines about rebooking and travel waivers. Airlines including Alaska Airlines and United Airlines announced flexible travel policies Friday as the disruption unfolded.
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