“Waking up to — we’re in Cleveland and not Newark — that was a little bit alarming,” said Danielle Riley, whose cross-country flight was rerouted from California, grounding astonished passengers in Ohio. An outage in a flight safety program prompted the Federal Aviation Administration Wednesday morning to halt all domestic flights for about 90 minutes, the first time the FAA had ordered a blanket grounding since 9/11. The agency lifted the order at 9 a.m. after it reloaded the computer system and brought it back online. But by then, the damage was done.
“I’ve been sitting here for four hours,” Niyah Glover said at Newark airport. “We’re stuck here, trying to find our baggage. It’s lost. We’ve been to three different terminals. And we’re not even in the state we’re supposed to be in, yet.”
Republican lawmakers called for an investigation. Residual flight delays continued to impact the system throughout the day. United Airlines said it’s waiving outrage-related change fees and offering refunds.
