More than 5,000 flights have been cancelled across the US, CNN reports, citing FlightAware and the aviation analytics firm Cirium. CNN says the ground stop remains in effect. "We anticipate that number will grow today," Cirium said, as quoted by CNN.
That is up from the 4,467 US cancellations Fox News attributed to FlightAware earlier. ABC News, which earlier gave "more than 4,000" without a source, now cites FlightAware for nearly 5,000 cancellations on Friday and nearly 800 for Saturday.
Cirium says 26,284 flights were scheduled to depart the US on Friday 13 November and over 15% of them were cancelled or did not take off. It counts a flight as "no fly" if it did not depart within 180 minutes of its scheduled time.
At least 827 flights diverted on Friday, according to Cirium. Of those, 670 returned to their departure airports. Most of the rest went to Chicago O'Hare, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.
A Cirium analysis reported by CNN estimates 1.5 million people were stranded by cancellations.
CNN notes that FlightAware's figures cover the whole day, not only the period after the ground stop was announced. Neither CNN nor ABC News says what time its figures were taken, and they have not been independently checked.