FAA ground stop disrupts NBA, NHL and college football weekend travel

More than 1.5 million air passengers, including sports teams in the NBA, NHL and college football, have faced travel disruption after the United States halted departing flights nationwide for more than four hours, with airlines warning they would take days to recover.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted the ground stop at 8:15pm Eastern time on Friday (01:15 GMT on Saturday), after a telecommunications outage affected the country's 22 regional air traffic control centres.

Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, said about 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart US airports after 4pm Eastern time (21:00 GMT), and that at least 827 flights had been diverted by 7:05pm on Friday (00:05 am on Saturday).

FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, with 700 flights already cancelled for Saturday.

Only 336 flights worldwide were in the air bound for the US at the lowest point during the ground stop, FlightRadar24 reported on X.

Passengers stranded

At Los Angeles airport, Nicholas Erdodi, who had travelled from New Zealand to attend a conference in Chicago, told Al Jazeera's John Hendren he had spent six hours at the airport after being forced off his plane.

"The challenge is you cannot ask anyone here what to do," he said. "Lack of information is what bothers me." He had been rebooked, but was unsure whether his next flight would go.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it would "take us some time" to restore capacity and that "we're going to have some makeup to do."

He acknowledged that tens of thousands of travellers had been stranded, saying he expected operations to be back to normal for the Thanksgiving rush, which begins in less than two weeks.

Sports weekend in chaos

The Associated Press news agency reported that the shutdown left NBA, NHL and college teams stranded, with NFL teams wondering whether they could travel in time for their games.

The Nets were among five NBA teams scheduled to fly on Friday for Saturday games.

There are 14 NHL games set to play Saturday.

The San Jose Sharks were left waiting to fly to Utah, while the Florida Panthers reached St Louis before the stoppage.

The Texas Longhorns had boarded their plane before it was grounded. "We are grounded and waiting to see when we can leave," a team spokesman said.

If they have to take a bus to Baton Rouge, the trip for Saturday's 6:30pm kickoff would take about seven hours.

The Washington Huskies' buses, carrying almost 200 people, had just reached the airport when the order came, The Washington Post reported.

College football teams due for matches had not yet reached their destinations.

The Big 12 conference said it was evaluating possible changes to Saturday's schedule, and the Southeastern Conference said it was "aware" of the impact on team travel.

Airlines and airports

Delta Air Lines said it was "safely resuming operations", offering flexible rebooking, and warned that repositioning aircraft and crews would take time.

United Airlines said it was resuming a number of Friday night flights.

JetBlue plans to resume on Saturday morning.

Air Canada said operations would return gradually, with disruption likely on Saturday, and Aeromexico was working to resume operations.

In Mexico City, the Benito Juarez International Airport said about 70 flights scheduled for Friday could be affected.

In Canada, Toronto Pearson said flights that did not need to cross US airspace were operating as normal and that it had increased staffing to support affected passengers.