Preparations for the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, set to be held in Shenzhen City on Wednesday and Thursday, have been completed.
The meeting will take place under the theme "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together".
The two-day APEC CEO Summit will open on Tuesday under the theme "To Prosper and Win the Future Together".
The fourth meeting of the APEC Business Advisory Council, which opened on Saturday, is well underway in Shenzhen on Sunday, with representatives from economies in the Asia-Pacific region engaging in intensive consultations on issues such as trade, connectivity, the digital economy and artificial intelligence to build consensus on cooperation.
Shenzhen ready for APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting
U.S. air travel is expected to return to full operational normality by Sunday night following a massive nationwide ground stop that disrupted thousands of flights and marked the country's longest flight shutdown in 25 years.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the national ground stop on Friday, halting domestic flight departures for over four hours and resulting in more than 10,000 delayed or canceled flights.
On Saturday, lingering bottlenecks from the communications system failure continued to snarl traffic nationwide. Major carriers were hit hard. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and American Airlines each canceled approximately 20 percent of their flights that day, while JetBlue canceled around 40 percent.
FAA Administrator Brian Bedford apologized to stranded travelers on Saturday, saying that "the worst is behind us." He also said that the airlines would be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday.
Bedford emphasized that the national ground stop was caused by equipment failure, but he ruled out any link to artificial intelligence.
U.S. aviation authorities have been coordinating with major airlines to restore regular flight operations, though delays and cancellations are projected to persist through Sunday.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the glitch occurred while a contractor for the FAA was performing line upgrade work to transition from copper cables to fiber optics, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
He said that the failure may have been caused by operator error or a router defect, which flooded other communication nodes with a massive surge of data, interfering with air-ground communications and causing radar signal interruptions.
Once authorities detected a continuous increase in system load and system overload, the decision was made to order a nationwide flight grounding, transportation secretary said.
On the same day, Duffy renewed his call for Congress to increase funding for the modernization of air traffic infrastructure. He attributed the nationwide flight shutdown to an extremely outdated air traffic control system.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, issued a statement on Saturday demanding Duffy to resign, saying that if he refuses to step down, President Trump should dismiss him.
From long-standing air traffic controller shortages to a succession of communications system failures, severe malfunctions in the U.S. aviation system have become the norm under Secretary Duffy's tenure, Hochul said in the statement.
Hochul urged Congress to launch a comprehensive investigation into the grounding to prevent future nationwide shutdowns.
US air travel expects full recovery by Sunday following massive nationwide ground stop
