FAA ground stop causes flight chaos at Richmond airport: 'It's really unfortunate'

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Thousands of travelers across the country navigated disrupted flight plans Saturday after problems related to air traffic control led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground flights for four hours Friday.

Richmond International Airport was among those impacted, with a total of 35 delays and 63 cancellations of flights into or out of the airport Friday night, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. Nationwide, a total of 9,147 flights were canceled.

Friends Sarah and Ariana were among those affected, facing a delay in their vacation from Boston to Richmond.

"Our flight got cancelled last night actually," Ariana said.

"We'll have one less day here; it was supposed to be three nights. Now it's two, but it's fine; we'll have fun regardless," Sarah said.

Traveler Kelian Goset said he felt fortunate to have avoided cancellation of his trip from France to Richmond.

"I feel lucky that I was able to take that flight and end up here in one piece," Goset said.

Others were not as fortunate. Jake Hovey, who traveled to Richmond for business, ended up in the city a day longer than expected.

"I was supposed to be on a flight out yesterday about 5:30 p.m. to Atlanta and then catch another flight to Chattanooga, but that didn't happen; it got delayed," Hovey said.

Hovey said he was ultimately rebooked on a different airline to get home.

"I guess the earliest flight I could get out was actually with another airline from Delta to American, so I'm actually about to fly out at 5:30 today to go back," Hovey said.

Richmond residents Susan and Samuel Gibbs decided to cancel their vacation to Texas outright due to the lingering impacts.

"We checked our bags and we went through security and now we have to wait for them to bring our bags back," Susan said.

"It was just our vacation. We are missing nothing crucial; we can always reschedule. We talked to people who are missing football games and baby showers and weddings," Susan said.

Samuel described the situation as difficult for everyone involved.

"It's really unfortunate for everyone to be dealing with this catastrophe," Samuel said.

At a press conference Saturday, FAA Administrator Bryan K. Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ruled out a cyber-attack and the use of its Smart AI system as the cause for the ground stop. They said they believe an error during maintenance by FAA contractor L3Harris may be to blame for disruptions in communications.

"What we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, was this user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router. We haven't determined what the fault was. Was it the router or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris," Duffy said.

Bedford said the system had stabilized and that airlines were working toward recovery.

"This morning, the system remains stable, and our airline partners are working through the operational recovery," Bedford said.

Despite delays and cancellations persisting throughout Saturday, Bedford expressed confidence that operations would return to normal before the end of the weekend.

"Based on everything that we're hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they will be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday," Bedford said.

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