Passengers travelling to and from the US continued to face delays and cancellations to flights on Saturday despite the FAA having lifted the ground stop.
Airlines are expecting to return to their full operating schedules by Sunday night following a nationwide ground stop that caused havoc at airports across the US this weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said.
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"Based on everything that we're hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they'll be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday," FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters on Saturday, adding that he believed the "worst is behind us."
Passengers travelling to and from the US continued to face delays and cancellations to flights on Saturday despite the FAA having lifted the ground stop.
The rare order had been issued on Friday following a "telecommunications outage," with all flights halted across the country.
"Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable," the FAA said, while advising travellers to contact airlines for updates.
US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said operations were "slowly returning to normal" on Saturday but that further delays and cancellations were likely as carriers rescheduled flights and moved aircraft and crews to where they were needed most.
Duffy has blamed the stoppage on what he called an "incredibly old" air traffic control system.
"At 8:15 (pm) tonight, eastern time, we've opened up the airspace. Now does that mean every flight is going to fly? Right now, it's going to be slow," he told the media on Friday. "It depends on do we have crews available, do we have pilots and flight attendants available to fly your flight. We're going to try to move as many of those as we can tonight."
"But it's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened," he added.
Flight-tracking site Flightradar24's airport disruption map showed major problems at airports across the US on Saturday.
Thousands of flights were cancelled across the country on both Friday and Saturday.
United Airlines, Delta and American have all said they were resuming flight operations.
"We're focused on operating as many remaining flights as possible this evening while positioning the airline for the strongest possible recovery in the days ahead," American said in a statement late on Friday.