Some cancellations, delays persist at LAX on Saturday after nationwide ground stop

LOS ANGELES () — The day after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop that lasted for hours, many travelers at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday found their flights canceled or delayed.

LAX, John Wayne Airport, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Ontario International Airport and Long Beach Airport were all advising travelers to reach out to the individual airlines for information about specific flights.

The air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday, FAA Bryan Bedford told reporters in Washington on Saturday. He said airlines “will still have delays and cancellations” Saturday but promised that the “worst is behind us.”

FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, reported more than 9,500 flight delays and about 5,300 cancellations nationwide by Friday evening. At LAX, more than 600 flights were delayed and 293 were canceled within a 24-hour period, according to FlightAware.

As of Saturday morning, the website was reporting over 14,000 delayed flights and nearly 5,000 canceled flights nationwide. That included 202 delays and 162 cancellations at LAX, 24 delays and 43 cancellations at John Wayne Airport, 22 delays and 14 cancellations at Hollywood/Burbank Airport, and 17 delays and nine cancellations at Long Beach Airport.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem began when contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was replacing a section of the air traffic control system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire, somehow causing the system to overload. The work led to “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, prompting the government to shut down air traffic for more than four hours.

Duffy said officials were investigating whether contractor “incompetence” or a faulty router was the cause. “Our contractor didn’t meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment,” he added.

L3Harris said it was supporting the FAA in its investigation to “understand the conditions” that led to the ground stop.

“L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously,” it said in a statement.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.