The federal government stopped every flight in the country Friday afternoon, and Philadelphia International Airport spent the evening digging out of the mess.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop around 3:54 PM after a communications issue hit all of its Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The stop lasted about five hours and was lifted around 8:15 PM.
Transportation Secretary Duffy said routers were overloaded with data. It was the second nationwide ground stop since 9/11.
At PHL, the damage piled up fast. FlightRadar24 counted 120 cancellations and 384 delays in 24 hours, with departure delays running 183 minutes. JetBlue and United canceled the rest of their Friday flights.
The stop came on a Friday, when weekend travel was already building, and it came with no warning to anyone already at the airport. Travelers who were supposed to be in the air Friday evening were instead stuck at gates and ticket counters while the FAA worked the problem.
The failure fits a pattern the country keeps living with. Reuters reported Saturday that old air traffic control equipment regularly disrupts US flights, and Friday was the latest reminder that the system running the busiest airspace in the world is held together with aging parts.
For Northeast travelers, the practical question is the weekend. The stop itself is over, but cancellations ripple. A plane that never left Friday night is a plane that is not in position Saturday morning, and crews that timed out Friday do not magically reset. Anyone flying out of PHL this weekend should check flight status before leaving for the airport, and expect the boards to keep changing.
Nobody was hurt, and no flights were in danger. That is the one clean fact in a day that otherwise showed how fast a single failure at the top of the system turns into thousands of ruined plans at the bottom of it.
