India, Nov. 14 -- The United States on Friday briefly grounded all departing flights across all airports following a communications outage, triggering chaos and confusion among hundreds of thousands of passengers whose travel plans were disrupted.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later attributed the grounding to a legacy air traffic control communications system overload. He said the system began issuing faulty data to regional air traffic control centres, prompting a nationwide "ground stop" that led to more than 14,000 cancelled and delayed flights.

While the grounding has now been cancelled, authorities said restoration of flight services would be a gradual process.

The FAA ground stop triggered panic and confusion at airport...