NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — After a chaotic day for air travel, there are signs of progress tonight: The nationwide ground stop has been lifted.
But getting flights moving again doesn't mean things immediately return to normal. Airlines have planes and crews out of position after thousands of delays and cancellations.
Officials say new technology introduced into an outdated air traffic control system overwhelmed it, causing communications problems at regional control centers. There's no indication this was a cyberattack, but officials say they can't rule out another outage.
The disruption was so widespread that hundreds of flights had to be diverted. International flights were handled on a case-by-case basis.
"Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down. And I shouldn't say they went down. They started to give us inconsistency in the data from those, from those routers, and because of that we shut the system down," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
The FAA says departures can resume, but airlines now have planes and crews out of position, so the ripple effects could continue for passengers.
At home, flights to New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Columbus and Charlotte were canceled. Many others were still delayed.
Early Friday evening, cancellations at BNA were being announced over the intercom. The message for travelers is simple: check directly with your airline before heading to the airport. This is changing quickly.
In Nashville, American Airlines announced it has stopped taking checked bags because it doesn't know when flights will resume. The airline is encouraging travelers who can spend the night in Nashville to do so and asking them to come to the counter to rebook for tomorrow.
For travelers here, the uncertainty is setting in in real time. One traveler heading to Philadelphia says the flight was already delayed before getting to the airport, then they arrived and heard about the ground stop. Another traveler heading to Alabama says a coworker sent a message that something was going on, but no one knew what it was. And a traveler trying to get to Los Angeles says the priority is safety — even if it means being late or delayed — and just wants to make it home safely.
"I really felt bad. There were a lot of people crying, and obviously lives are impacted wherever they're going. Some have weddings, some have funerals, so yeah, it's a lot to deal with. You just think, hey and I hate to say this, it's not 9/11. So that's a good thing," traveler Amette Parsons said.
As flights were delayed and canceled, nearby hotel rooms sold out quickly and were turning away customers. And with many airlines not resuming flights until tomorrow, travelers are still trying to figure out where to go.
"It's chaos because no one's sure what to do. No one has any answer as to what to do, whether to rebook, whether to wait, whether to do anything. So you're kind of at a standstill. You have no clue what to attack first, triage the whole entire incident. So everyone's just kind of stuck," said one traveler.
It wasn't just hotels — ride-share wait times and prices also jumped, and people scrambled for rental cars too. I met a man from San Diego who was standing in line hoping to get a rental car and drive roughly 30 hours home.
"The line is long. My legs hurt. I'm hungry. I'm tired, but we're gonna do our best to stick it out because I don't think there's any other option," a traveler said.
So while planes are once again allowed in the air, for many of the people stranded here, lifting the ground stop doesn't immediately get them home.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
North Nashville lost a passionate advocate and historian with the passing of Lorenzo Washington. I had the pleasure to get to know him while working on a story and left with a wealth of information and appreciation for how Jefferson Street shaped the sound of Music City. Aaron Cantrell shows us how Lorenzo will forever be part of that.
- Carrie Sharp
