By Isa Mudannayake and Staff

(CNN) - Thousands of travelers face an uncertain weekend at airports across the country because of delays amid yesterday’s nationwide hourslong ground stop, forced by a telecommunications outage. Some domestic US flights are now resuming on Saturday but airlines face a battle to clear the backlog.

The Trump administration has blamed old air traffic control technology and overloaded routers, pointing to FAA updates to those aging systems. The ground stop did not stem from a threat to the US and was not linked to this week’s disruptive Microsoft outage, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urged Congress to provide funds for improvements and said it’s “going to be slow” to return to normal, adding that it shouldn’t impact Thanksgiving travel.

More than 3,600 flights within, into or out of the US have been canceled for Saturday, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware, as airlines work through the backlog from yesterday’s nationwide hourslong ground stop.

As of 8:45 a.m. ET, Delta Air Lines had canceled 20% of its scheduled Saturday flights, United Airlines 17% and American Airlines 15%. Weary travelers can expect more long lines and travel disruptions at airports across the country.

The-CNN-Wire
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