National ground stop leaves travelers stranded at Boston Logan: "I can't leave this airport"
A rare nationwide ground stop issued Friday that led to thousands of flights being canceled across the country is over, but travelers at Boston's Logan International Airport are still seeing its impact.
"I can't leave this airport. There's no flights, everything has doubled in price," Arnold Besteo, who flew to Boston from Ireland, told WBZ-TV.
For the second day in a row, more than 200 flights have been canceled out of Logan Airport due to the fallout from the more than four-hour long ground stop.
"I'm sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a news conference.
The FAA said the stoppage was out of an abundance of caution and that an equipment failure caused a telecommunications outage, putting safety at risk.
"We see zero evidence of anything nefarious and zero evidence of anything AI related, so we want to be clear that we have an equipment issue, and we're working through what this defective piece of equipment was," Bedford said.
"I think most people would want to hear a little more answers because it's a lot of work that goes into travel," traveler Troy Goodwin told WBZ-TV.
Frustration continued at Logan Airport into Saturday as some passengers were still looking to book other travel accommodation.
"Unfortunately, there were no other options that will make it to Miami today. So, there we go, I'll miss this event. I came all the way from Ireland for it," Besteo said. "I managed to get a hotel close by, very expensive price, but I got a place to stay."
Other travelers were hopeful flights scheduled for Saturday would take off without issue.
"We were staying positive so we all got here ready to go and unfortunately canceled flights so we're just trying to figure out the best steps," Goodwin said of his canceled flight to Las Vegas.
Former Massport Director Thomas Kinton told WBZ-TV this ground stop may take another few days to completely resolve.
"When you shut down the entire aviation system in the United States of America, it has a huge impact," Kinton said. "Crews time out, the pilots run out of flight time, so they have to cancel flights in place. Now you got crews out of position. You got aircrafts out of position, and the airlines tasked with putting that system back together again it's going to take days."
He added that updating the communications system as a whole could take much longer.
"The system is old. I mean it's very old and we're paying the price now because we are seeing that outages are more and more frequent," Kinton said.
Officials at Logan Airport advised passengers to check with their airlines for travel vouchers, fee waivers and rebookings. Delta Air Lines is suggesting passengers wait to rebook until Monday or later in the week if possible.
