The head of the Federal Aviation Administration apologized to the traveling public on Saturday and laid out the arithmetic of the recovery from Friday’s nationwide ground stop: thousands more cancellations on Saturday, then a full schedule again by the end of Sunday.
“First of all, I’d like to start with an apology, sincere apology to the American traveling public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said at a Department of Transportation briefing in Washington. “Tens of thousands of Americans had their flights disrupted yesterday. And I want you to understand, we did that out of an abundance of caution.”
Bedford’s math for Friday: 50,000 flights were scheduled. About 30,000 had been completed when the ground stop came at about 3:45 p.m. Eastern, leaving 20,000 still to fly during the halt of roughly four hours. Airlines recovered about 8,000 of them. The other 12,000 were lost for good, roughly 9,000 commercial flights and 3,000 private and general aviation flights.
“We do anticipate somewhere between four and five thousand of the 41,000 flights that are scheduled today likely will cancel,” Bedford said. “So we will still have delays and cancellations today. But that will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow, and based on everything that we’re hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they’ll be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday. So I do think the worst is behind us.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the air traffic control system itself is “back at full operations.” Saturday’s disruption, both men said, is airlines repositioning the aircraft and crews left out of place by the 12,000 lost flights, and Bedford said the system remained stable on Saturday morning.
Video: U.S. Department of Transportation
