Manchester Airport has said it does not expect significant delays to its three US-bound flights today, despite a nationwide ground stop imposed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) overnight due to "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety".
The FAA halted all flights across the United States for several hours on Friday (November 13) following communications problems at regional air traffic control centres. British travellers have been warned to expect possible disruption today (November 14) as the backlog is cleared.
Manchester Airport Statement on Today's Flights
A spokesperson for Manchester Airport said: "We're due to have three flights to the US today. They're all in the air and en route here with slight delays – but nothing significant."
The spokesperson added: "The three flights are to New York, Orlando and Atlanta – all operated by Virgin Atlantic. Our advice to passengers is simply to keep an eye out for any updates to their flight times but to plan to travel as usual."
Passengers have been advised to travel to the airport as planned for the original departure time, unless informed otherwise.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Cancellations
British Airways cancelled a flight to New York that had been due to take off from London Heathrow at 10.30pm, and apologised for possible delays and cancellations. Virgin Atlantic also confirmed that a flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK scheduled to leave on Friday had been cancelled.
A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said: "We're aware of the ground stop order issued by the Federal Aviation Administration for all US airports."
The spokesperson continued: "We're closely monitoring the situation and assessing any impact to our flights. We advise any customers due to travel to check their flight status at virginatlantic.com."
Wider Impact and Eurocontrol Suspension
The situation is expected to have minimal impact on London Gatwick Airport. London Heathrow's website said most flights scheduled to depart on Saturday morning were running on schedule, although an 8.20am flight to Dallas Fort Worth had been cancelled, along with a number of incoming flights from the US.
Late on Friday, Eurocontrol said all US-bound air traffic from its member states had been suspended. A statement on the organisation's website said: "To the attention of all Aircraft Operators: On request of FAA due to technical issues all traffic departing within IFPZ (Eurocontrol member states) between 2200 UTC on 13 NOV and 0500 UTC on 14 NOV, bound for US airports is suspended."
Eurocontrol has 42 member states, including the UK, Ireland, Germany and France, as well as two agreement states – Israel and Morocco.
Second Nationwide Grounding Since 2001
This is only the second time flights have been grounded across the US since the September 11 terror attacks in 2001. Flights were previously halted by the FAA in January 2023 because of a system error.
Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system overwhelmed it. He could not rule out another outage, and added that "it doesn't appear" a cyber attack or rogue artificial intelligence played a role in the incident.
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy said he expected flights around the US to be "back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel" next weekend ahead of Thanksgiving, but also suggested more disruptions might occur. "We didn't think we would have this kind of outage. We did," he said. "We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these."
