Flight disruptions continued on Saturday and could extend through the weekend as airlines raced to recover from the Federal Aviation Administration's longest nationwide groundstop since 9/11, a measure the Trump administration blamed on a communications equipment failure in air traffic control.
More than 3,000 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday and close to 1,000 were delayed as of 5:45 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. That's on top of about 9,000 U.S. flight cancellations and more than 7,000 delays on Friday, though some disruptions were due to bad weather.
Part of the job of untangling from the ground stop includes getting aircraft where they need to be. The ground stop forced many planes to divert to other airports.
Airlines run one of the lightest schedules on Saturday and are deploying as many spare planes and crews as possible to get travelers and employees where they need to be as they're eager to start fresh for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday period.
Around 3 million people would typically be scheduled to fly on Saturday, according to aviation data firm Cirium.