Thousands of fed-up travelers were stranded across Big Apple airports Friday after an extremely rare nationwide ground stop delayed and canceled countless flights for hours — before being lifted shortly before 8:30 p.m.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced the unprecedented move just before 4 p.m. to ground all flights – prompting a wave of cancellations at some of the nation’s busiest travel hubs, including New York’s LaGuardia and JFK airports.
The fiasco began around 3:30 p.m., when air traffic control facilities that monitor medium and high-altitude flight traffic experienced communication and radar instability issues — and snarled air travel for millions.
“We started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained at a White House press briefing.
“At that point we issued a ground stop,” he said, noting that more than 3,500 airplanes were in the sky at the time and all but 400 had landed before the freeze was lifted at around 8:15 p.m. Friday night.
Duffy said the inconsistencies were the result of the country’s “incredibly old air traffic control system” getting “overloaded with data.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who joined Duffy at the press conference, said there was “zero evidence” a cyberattack or any other sort of nefarious action led to the communication and radar issues.
“What it appears to be right now is, as Secretary Duffy was going in and putting patches into the system, they were putting new equipment and new technology and that new equipment, new technology, just wasn’t – it was overwhelming the older system,” Mullin said. “Which is why Secretary Duffy made it very clear, the patchwork doesn’t work.
“We need one complete system.”
Duffy called on Congress to authorize $50 billion in new funding for a “state-of-the-art” air traffic control system.
The transportation secretary also cautioned that while the ground stop had been lifted, it might take some time for commercial airline operations to get back to normal.
Duffy said he expected that things will be completely “back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel during Thanksgiving.”
Follow the latest on the FAA’s nationwide ground stop:
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At New York City airports, travelers quickly grew tired of the wait.
Hannah, a member of the US Navy, had been traveling for 30 hours and was on her last leg home to Florida from deployment when her flight out of LaGuardia was canceled.
“We were coming from abroad, it’s been multiple days to get here,” a weary Hannah told The Post. “This was the last step to get home, and it just didn’t work out for us.”
Some 26,000 flights were delayed and another 5,000 canceled across the US before Duffy announced the ground stop had been lifted.
“It just really pisses me off,” Eric Ji, 22, said from JFK Airport. “I haven’t taken a flight in two years and the one time I take a flight, the entire US gets grounded.”
An announcement at LaGuardia Airport told travelers to expect a two- to three-hour wait time to collect luggage checked in on canceled flights. A worker there said the delays were so lengthy because of the massive number of bags to sort through.
“I am irritated and I am tired and I am all of the things,” said hairstylist Sarai Martinez, 42, who was meant to fly home to Boston at 6 p.m.
“I’m on the verge of leaving my bag here,” a fed-up Martinez groused. “I’m going to get in the cab and f–k my bag.”
Even after the ground stop was lifted, many travelers were still in limbo waiting at Big Apple air hubs and were frustrated with the airport’s response to the rare nationwide event.
“I feel exhausted,” upstate New Yorker Alfred Khan said while sitting on the floor of Kennedy airport with his bags. “I feel abandoned by the airline.”
“They could have given us some vouchers for food for 10 bucks. There must be children and pregnant women. It would have been a nice gesture,” Khan, 55, said of American Airlines.
Khan added that “the problem is not the delay,” but instead “it’s the lack of compassion by the airline.”
“Not even a bottle of water and terrible communication,” he fumed, unsure if or when he would make it to Miami for his business trip.
“My rental car is messed up. My hotel is messed up.”
Another traveler stressed he “can’t trust the airline” because of the chaos that ensued during the ground stop.
Carlos Abarca, 54, was meant to fly to Washington, DC, at 5 p.m. and spent hours looking for a rental car, bus ticket or train ticket to make it to the nation’s capital.
“Unfortunately, those options aren’t available, they’re sold out. I’m trying to figure out what my next move is gonna be,” Abarca said.
“Right now, I can’t trust the airline because after what happened today, that’s gonna affect tomorrow,” he stressed. “Even as an experienced business traveler, I’m stranded in the city that doesn’t sleep.”
