Shafaq News- Washington

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted its nationwide ground stop on Saturday, allowing departures to resume after a telecommunications outage, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

Duffy warned that recovery would be slow and depend on the availability of pilots and cabin crews.

Nearly 10,000 flights to and from US airports had been canceled through Saturday due to the halt, according to Flightradar24.

The communications failure affected 22 regional air traffic control centers, Duffy said, blaming overloaded switches and routers in the FAA’s older telecommunications network. He ruled out the agency’s new AI-powered SMART tool as the cause but cautioned that further outages could occur.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new equipment had overwhelmed older systems. Investigators had found no indication of a cyberattack but had not ruled it out, he added.