New Delhi:

Confusion and panic ensued at airports across the United States late last night after a communications failure forced a rare, brief grounding of all departing flights from the US and stranded thousands of passengers, disrupting their family plans and work journeys.

According to the US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the shutdown - the second such since the September 11, 2001 attacks - was a precautionary measure after a telecommunications outage affecting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It was lifted, and flight operations resumed after a few hours, as the possibility of a threat and a nefarious attack was ruled out.

"This isn't another 9/11," he said.

However, passengers are still likely to face delays or cancellations as airlines reposition aircraft and crews.

At New York's Kennedy Airport, Riley Alexis Holmes had hoped to fly to Oregon in time for her brother's musical closing night. Instead, after nearly two hours of delay, her flight was cancelled.

"I called my mom and cried, and I'm just sitting here waiting for information," she said.

Another passenger said, "I feel very frustrated because you know, you come to the airport and then all of a sudden your whole plans have changed and you don't know when you're leaving, We're kind of stuck."

At Newark, a passenger identified as Jose was trying to reach Toronto for work. He told CNN he had bought his ticket after the ground stop began. "This already happened, and they sold it to me anyway, he said.

In New York's busy LaGuardia Airport, Janice Llewellyn was on the verge of tears: The chaos could mean she will miss her daughter's wedding in Toronto. "I may lose my mind...My husband flew all the way from England to get to the wedding. Oh gosh! I wish they had another flight, I wish I could get another flight, like, now," she said.

Photo Credit: AFP

At the airport in Las Vegas, some fliers were told their journeys were delayed due to wind.

One of the fliers said he was trying to get back to Oakland from Vegas and was considering driving - but said, "If the whole country is stopped, that means the highways are going to be jammed too."

In Florida, Gainesville Regional Airport ordered pizza for about 80 passengers who were stuck due to the shutdown.

The ground stop came less than two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, the busiest travel time of the year in the US.

Many airlines issued advisories to their passengers during the flight shutdown.

Air India warned of possible disruptions to flights to and from the US and advised passengers to check their flight status before travelling to the airport.

American Airlines said the ground stop remained in place, although some flights at certain airports were beginning to receive clearance to depart.

US Top Official Blames Congress

US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said that the flight outages were caused by "old systems getting overloaded with data" and that the US Congress did not fund a full package to get them replaced.

"Do you want Congress to fund this? President Trump has asked for the money. This is analog telecom. Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down. And I shouldn't say they went down, they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down," he said.

Duffy further demanded the money to fix the issue.

"Give us the resources to build a state-of-the-art air traffic control system. Let's not do a patchwork fix to a system that's critical for every single family. It's not red, it's not red, it's not blue, it's not Democrat, it's not Republican, it's American. Give us the money to fix it," he said.

(With inputs from agencies)