The US air travel schedule is not expected to return to normal until late on Sunday evening. This was reported by the leadership of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Reuters writes.
The aviation system is currently gradually recovering after a nationwide flight shutdown, which officials said was caused by a malfunction during routine maintenance work.
According to the aviation website FlightAware, as of Saturday evening airlines had cancelled more than 6,400 flights in the country, and a further 8,000-plus flights were delayed.
This followed the cancellation of around 9,200 flights and the delay of 7,500 flights on Friday, after the FAA ordered all flights in the country to be suspended due to problems in the communications system that supports air traffic control.
Today in the United States, 875 flights have already been cancelled.
The nationwide departure ban on Friday was the longest nationwide aviation shutdown since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and also one of the worst days for travel in US history.
Because of the incident, the White House convened an emergency meeting in the Situation Room on Friday, and federal agencies launched an urgent review to determine whether it was a cyberattack.
However, as Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday, the problem turned out to have been caused by an FAA contractor, L3Harris, installing at least one new router at a remote facility. Work to replace copper cable with fibre-optic cable caused the router to malfunction, overloading part of the data transmission system between air traffic controllers and aircraft.