Caribbean Air­lines has an­nounced wide­spread flight can­cel­la­tions and de­lays across its North Amer­i­can and re­gion­al net­work, af­ter a na­tion­al ground stop re­strict­ed Unit­ed States air­space yes­ter­day.

The air­line con­firmed that the air­space re­stric­tions have dis­rupt­ed all flights en­ter­ing and de­part­ing the Unit­ed States.

The car­ri­er not­ed that it is ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and re­mains in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with rel­e­vant avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties.

Trav­ellers are ad­vised to check their flight sta­tus on the Caribbean Air­lines web­site.

The dis­rup­tion fol­lowed a de­ci­sion by the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) to ground all flights na­tion­wide yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, for on­ly the sec­ond time since the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist at­tacks.

Of­fi­cials cit­ed “ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances” caused by com­mu­ni­ca­tions prob­lems at re­gion­al air traf­fic con­trol cen­tres.

Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy said the agency was in­ves­ti­gat­ing an is­sue af­fect­ing the 22 re­gion­al cen­tres re­spon­si­ble for di­rect­ing air­craft trav­el­ling be­tween air­ports across the coun­try. The re­stric­tions were im­posed for safe­ty rea­sons.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Mark­wayne Mullin at­trib­uted the prob­lem to a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions out­age, say­ing there was no in­di­ca­tion that it was a de­lib­er­ate at­tack.

“It’s just a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions out­age as of right now,” Mullin said, adding that every­one was safe and there was no rea­son for con­cern about loved ones trav­el­ling by air.

The ground stop was the first na­tion­wide sus­pen­sion of flights since Jan­u­ary 2023, when a mal­func­tion in a key FAA com­put­er sys­tem dis­rupt­ed air trav­el.

The lat­est dis­rup­tion had sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences for trav­ellers, with at least 600 flights di­vert­ed. Ac­cord­ing to avi­a­tion an­a­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Cir­i­um, 496 flights had been di­vert­ed to the air­ports from which they orig­i­nal­ly de­part­ed, while 104 were sent to dif­fer­ent air­ports.

Some 11,000 flights car­ry­ing more than 1.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers were sched­uled to de­part US air­ports yes­ter­day, rais­ing the like­li­hood of fur­ther can­cel­la­tions and di­ver­sions.

The dis­rup­tion left pas­sen­gers un­cer­tain about when they would reach their des­ti­na­tions.

Mullin said in­ves­ti­ga­tors would ex­am­ine whether the out­age was con­nect­ed to the FAA’s na­tion­wide roll­out of a new ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence sys­tem de­signed to iden­ti­fy prob­lems and rec­om­mend al­ter­na­tive routes for air­craft. How­ev­er, that sys­tem op­er­ates from a lo­ca­tion near Wash­ing­ton, DC, and sends rec­om­men­da­tions to air traf­fic con­trol cen­tres.

The US gov­ern­ment has been work­ing to mod­ernise age­ing air traf­fic con­trol tech­nol­o­gy since Con­gress ap­proved $12.5 bil­lion for the project last year. Miles of old cop­per wires have been re­placed with fi­bre-op­tic lines, while old­er ra­dio sys­tems at air­ports are grad­u­al­ly be­ing up­grad­ed. How­ev­er, more work re­mains, with Duffy say­ing an­oth­er $30 bil­lion would be need­ed to com­plete the over­haul. The White House has be­gun lob­by­ing Con­gress for the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing.

Yes­ter­day’s ground stop dif­fered from the re­stric­tions im­posed af­ter the Sep­tem­ber 11 at­tacks be­cause air­craft were not or­dered to land im­me­di­ate­ly, and pi­lots were like­ly still able to com­mu­ni­cate with ground con­trollers at air­ports.

Four CAL flights sched­uled for yes­ter­day were can­celled

BW78: Toron­to to Kingston, Ja­maica

BW617: Toron­to to George­town, Guyana

BW481: Fort Laud­erdale to Trinidad

BW526: George­town, Guyana to New York

Caribbean Air­lines stat­ed that pas­sen­gers booked on the can­celled flights would be re-ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the next avail­able ser­vices.

Four ad­di­tion­al ser­vices sched­uled across yes­ter­day and to­day have been de­layed, and the air­line’s reser­va­tions teams are cur­rent­ly con­tact­ing af­fect­ed trav­ellers.

These in­clude

BW601 (Nov 13): Toron­to to Trinidad

BW520 (Nov 14): Trinidad to New York

BW521 (Nov 14): New York to Trinidad

BW527 (Nov 14): New York to Guyana to Trinidad