Passengers face further disruption as thousands of flights affected in US

Air travel disruptions across the United States are expected to continue well into Sunday, with thousands of flights cancelled or delayed as airlines struggle to restore normal operations following a nationwide shutdown triggered by problems in the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) air traffic control communications system. FAA chief Bryan Bedford said on Saturday that flight schedules were unlikely to return to normal until late Sunday, even as the agency worked to stabilise operations and address the technical issues behind the disruption.Bedford apologised to passengers for the disruption, saying the aviation system remained stable and that the FAA expected operations to largely recover by late Sunday.
According to reports, as of 6:45 ‌pm ET (23:45 GMT), airlines on Saturday had canceled more than 6,150 US flights and delayed more than 7,300, according to FlightAware, an aviation website. That followed about 9,200 flights canceled and 7,500 delayed on Friday after the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop because of disruptions to air traffic communications. FlightAware said more than 530 flights scheduled for Sunday were already canceled. The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop ​on Friday that halted nearly all departing flights for almost five hours. It was the longest nationwide halt to air travel since the ⁠attacks of September 11, 2001 and one of the single worst US travel days ever.
The issue prompted the White House to convene an emergency meeting in the Situation Room on ​Friday and federal agencies to scramble to determine if it was a cyberattack. But the problem was traced to FAA contractor L3Harris' (LHX.N), opens new tab installation of at least one new router at a ​remote facility, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday."We're working to determine whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven't determined what the fault was," Duffy told reporters at a news conference.