Flight ground stop leaves travelers scrambling for ways home

It was arguably one of the worst times for a nationwide flight grounding: Friday, late afternoon, just as people were heading to airports for weekend jaunts or to return home from business trips.

The ground stop from the Federal Aviation Administration, called around 4 p.m. Eastern time Friday, left passengers across the country stranded on tarmacs and stuck in terminals awaiting news of when — or if — their flights would take off.

At New York’s LaGuardia Airport Friday evening, there wasn’t a seat to be found in the United Airlines terminal and bars were packed as passengers waited for news. Lines snaked around customer service at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. At Dallas Love Field, the scene at one security checkpoint was a rarity heading into the weekend: completely barren.

The FAA lifted the ground stop just over four hours after it began. But by then, travelers had spent hours watching flight boards with estimated times ticking up and weighing how long they would wait before giving up. For some, that meant a quick calculation whether to stick it out and hope flights would resume, or start racing fellow stranded travelers for hotel rooms, rental cars or other ways home.

“I have no idea what’s happening,” said Bernadeta Serafin, a Brooklyn resident who was trying to get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from John F. Kennedy International Airport to see a Friday night show. “What can I do?”

The nationwide ground stop — only the third in U.S. history — came at the end of what had already been a remarkable week of tech-related events, from the downfall of Jensen Huang, one of the most powerful names in AI, to a widespread outage of Microsoft Corp. products including Outlook, Teams and Copilot. The flight shutdown stemmed from a communications outage tied to a data overload, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Duffy said Saturday that officials are looking into whether aerospace and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was at fault for the shutdown. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters just after the ground stop that there was no indication of a threat. Microsoft said there was no sign it was tied to any of its services. With few details of what was happening Friday, rumors and gossip filled the vacuum.

“I’m a little bit nervous to fly because yesterday the emails were all down,” said Lauren Sklarin, who was at JFK awaiting a flight to West Palm Beach, Florida. She was eager to get to her new condo in Delray Beach — a furniture delivery was arriving Saturday.

More than 4,500 flights within, into or out of the U.S. had been canceled and about 4,600 delayed as of 1:22 p.m. ET Saturday, according to FlightAware. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said airlines expect to resume normal flight schedules by the end of business Sunday.

At O’Hare on Saturday morning, Ellen Rendle, a 64-year-old librarian, was back at the gate trying to get home to Delaware. She’d booked a hotel after spending three hours at the airport Friday as her flight was pushed back an hour at a time. The Uber to her hotel cost $100.

“They know everybody’s desperate,” she said. Her rebooked flight appeared to be on time, but even if it left as scheduled, she’d miss a memorial service she’d hoped to attend.

Some passengers in New York had to endure a second straight evening of travel tumult after stormy weather caused flight cancellations Thursday. Xander Blood was supposed to fly home to the San Diego area Thursday evening after a trip with friends. It took him until 2 a.m. to find a hotel — ending up in Floral Park, Queens. He didn’t know what he’d do if he’s stuck again.

“This is the second day,” Blood said. “It’s a bummer.”

Passengers already aboard planes faced a different sort of limbo. A Delta Air Lines Inc. flight bound for Richmond, Virginia, had been in line for takeoff at LaGuardia when the pilot told passengers of the communications issue and headed back toward the terminal. But with arriving planes occupying gates, there was nowhere to park, leaving passengers to sit on the plane for hours sharing snacks and making backup plans.

Michelle Otey was on her way to Boston from California and about 20 minutes from landing when she got an alert on her phone about the FAA ground stop. The flight crew didn’t make an announcement acknowledging it, she said, leaving her to search online to figure out what was happening.

“How are we landing a plane without air traffic control?” she wondered. “We’re just winging it?” The flight ultimately landed normally.

In Chicago, Melissa Dzeletovic had taken her 15-year-old son, Luka, to O’Hare for his first flight by himself — a trip to visit a cousin in Atlanta. He boarded the plane and moments before they were set to take off he called his mom and told her there was an issue. Dzeletovic decided to take him back home and reschedule the trip.

“He was on the plane for about 10 to 15 minutes, and then they asked them to get off the plane, and he’s been waiting by the gate for a couple of hours,” she said. “I’m going to take him because I’m already nervous that he’s in this situation.”

Kirk Framke, an eighth grade math teacher from Denver, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport with a large group of students returning from a marine biology camp on Catalina Island. With their cell phones stashed in a chaperone’s bag, the students had no idea what was happening.

“There are no flights taking off anywhere in the entire United States,” Framke told them, prompting groans and an audible “What?”

Framke said school officials were making arrangements for a charter bus to make the 1,000-mile, 15-hour drive back to Denver, if they weren’t able to get a flight home Friday. In the meantime, the group planned to order pizzas to the check-in area and break out games such as Exploding Kittens and Taco Cat.

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(With assistance from Millie Munshi, Myles Miller, Julie Fine, Hani Shawwa and Anne Riley Moffat.)