US air travel disruptions continue for third consecutive day

Air travel disruptions in the United States continued for a third consecutive day, with more than 5,200 flights affected on Sunday. However, US Secretary of Transportation Shawn Davi expected the situation to return to normal by Monday, as airlines rushed to restore their schedules following a nationwide flight halt.

According to aviation data site FlightAware, over 1,600 flights within the US were canceled and about 3,600 others delayed on Sunday.

On Saturday, airlines canceled more than 6,400 domestic flights and delayed over 8,000 others.

Davi said on ABC's 'This Week' there was no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious intent, but the cause of the disruptions remains unclear.

He added that flights would return to "normal" today and possibly be fully restored by Monday, stressing that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) places great importance on passenger safety.

On Friday, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop order, suspending most departing flights for about five hours. This marked the longest such halt in US aviation since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Officials said that contractor L3Harris installed at least one new router at a remote facility, which caused a surge of data to other air traffic control centers, overloading them and disrupting communications systems.

Davi explained that replacing a router at an FAA facility in El Dorado, Arkansas, led to issues with a recently replaced router in Amarillo, Texas, which began sending excessive data and overwhelmed routers at other air traffic control centers nationwide.

The FAA said Sunday it had disabled "original router functions" and applied the same fix to about 60 similar routers in the air traffic control system. However, Davi noted the root cause is still unknown, emphasizing that such maintenance has been performed thousands of times before without issues.

Davi said the technician who installed the router "is a good American citizen, and we believe he is a veteran, so we do not think anyone tried to sabotage the network during installation," adding, "but we do not yet know the root cause."

The disruption on Friday is the latest and most significant sign of the strain on the US air traffic control system, which faces technological, equipment, and communications challenges due to aging infrastructure and a shortage of thousands of air traffic controllers.

US President Donald Trump made his first public comments on the air travel issues that occurred earlier this week, also calling on lawmakers to provide additional funding.

Trump wrote on social media, "We have already started work, but it should be completed all at once, not in phases. Congress must approve."

Democrats are set to take control of Congress from Trump's Republican allies in January, following their gains in the November 3 midterm elections.