U.S. flights resume after FAA ground stop, but travel chaos continues

U.S. flights resumed Saturday after the Federal Aviation Administration halted flight departures across the country for more than four hours on Friday, leading to thousands of flight delays and cancellations.

The disruption is set to continue this weekend, even after the nationwide ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET on Friday.

"The safety of the flying public is always the FAA's highest priority. The FAA lifted the ground stop and some flight departures are resuming," the agency said in a post on X on Saturday.

"Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable," it added.

There were more than 6,200 delays and more than 3,400 cancellations as of early Saturday, according to FlightAware.

The disruption also upended travel for NBA, NHL and college teams struggled to reach their destinations in time for games this weekend.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said college football teams traveling on charter flights could receive priority.

"I would encourage those football teams to reach out to the FAA to schedule their flight times and make sure they have games going off tomorrow," he said during a Friday press briefing.

The Southeastern Conference announced on X that some games had been moved to Sunday due to the flight disruption.

"We are in close communication with our member institutions to assess potential disruptions and coordinate appropriate responses," the SEC said in a statement shared on X.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the "outdated" air traffic control system posed a "national security risk." He told reporters that there was no evidence of a cyberattack of an "SI attack," referring to artificial intelligence.

Duffy added that telecommunications routers were overloaded with data. "They went down," he said.