Manchester Airport has said its three scheduled flights to the US today are all in the air and en route with slight delays, after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all flights nationwide overnight "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety".
The halt, which lasted for several hours on Friday (November 13), came in the wake of communications failures at regional air traffic control centres. British travellers have been urged to prepare for potential disruption today (November 14) as the backlog clears stateside.
Manchester Airport's statement
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 three flights are to New York, Orlando and Atlanta – all operated by Virgin Atlantic. The spokesperson added: "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."
Travellers are being advised to make their way to the airport as originally planned, arriving for their scheduled departure time unless they are notified otherwise.
Flight cancellations
British Airways was forced to cancel a flight to New York that had been scheduled to depart from London Heathrow at 10.30pm, with the airline apologising for any resulting delays and cancellations.
Virgin Atlantic confirmed that a flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK, scheduled to depart 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."
"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
It is understood that the disruption is expected to have a minimal effect on London Gatwick Airport. London Heathrow's website indicated that the majority of its Saturday morning departures were operating as planned, however an 8.20am service to Dallas Fort Worth had been cancelled, alongside a number of inbound flights from the US.
Late on Friday, Eurocontrol announced that all flights bound for the US from its member states had been suspended amid the ongoing disruption. A statement published on the organisation's website read: "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.
This marks only the second occasion on which flights have been grounded across the entire US since the September 11 terror attacks in 2001. Flights were 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. Mr Mullin added "it doesn't appear" that 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 he 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."
