The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted its grounding order on all US flights, though it appears delays and cancellations will carry through the weekend.
Departures were halted nationwide for hours for only the second time since 9/11, with more than 10,000 flights disrupted and wrestling shows across the weekend, including AEW Full Gear, TNA Destination X, and NJPW-CMLL Lucha Kingdom thrown into doubt.
Mexico’s Federal Aviation Agency, AFAC, announced in response to the issues that it had grounded all flights bound for the US. After the FAA lifted the grounding order, it was announced by AFAC that adjustments were made to the itineraries of 193 flights, affecting 18,002 passengers at Mexican airports. AFAC said that a gradual restoration of air operations between the two countries is expected.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a briefing that telecommunications routers were overloaded with data, while DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that there was no indication that the issues were a threat to the US, adding that it didn’t appear to be a cyber attack.
The ground stop lasted more than four hours, but was said to be a decision made out of an “abundance of caution.” CNBC reports that JetBlue Airways told staff it would cancel the remainder of the day’s flights as well as others scheduled for Saturday so that crews and planes are in place to resume operations.
A ground stop halts flights at their departure point and can lead to further disruptions as flights crews reach their maximum number of duty hours for a day. 11,000 flights were scheduled to depart US airports after 4 PM ET on Friday, per the flight-data firm Cirum, with 1.5 million passengers. There were approximately 600 diverted flights, 104 of them sent to other airports.
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