By Andrew Tangel and Alison Sider

Air traffic at two major Dallas-area airports returned to normal, the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday afternoon, after a telecom equipment outage prompted delays and hundreds of canceled flights.

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said disruptions from Friday's outage spilled over into early Saturday. American, which operates a hub at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, canceled more than 530 flights Friday and 160 so far on Saturday, Chief Operating Officer David Seymour said in an internal memo.

Southwest, which has a large operation at Dallas Love Field, said it had one flight cancellation Friday and normal operations have since resumed.

A Frontier Communications representative said the outage resulted from an accidental cutting of fiber-optic lines by a third-party contractor working in Argyle, Texas.

The FAA said oversight by its contractor L3Harris "failed to ensure that redundancies in the system functioned properly."

Seymour complained about both companies, saying in his memo that he and Chief Executive Robert Isom had difficulty reaching their leaders.

"We are extraordinarily disappointed that neither provider seems to have any sense of urgency to resolve this matter," Seymour wrote.

Dozens of American flights headed to DFW diverted and many were stuck overnight, and the airline faced an "unrelenting" volume of calls for assistance. In all, American said more than 100,000 customers were affected by cancellations, delays, diversions and missed connections.

The Frontier spokesperson didn't have an immediate response to Seymour's criticism and said its team worked overnight and closely coordinated with the FAA and the airports to stabilize the systems.

L3Harris didn't have an immediate comment Saturday.

As part of the outage, air-traffic controllers also lost radar and radio communications, according to preliminary information provided by government officials late Friday. Such outages have occurred over the past year in the Northeast at an FAA facility that oversees Newark Liberty International Airport.

The FAA said the outage was a clear example of the nation's outdated air-traffic control infrastructure and the urgent need to modernize it.

Write to Andrew Tangel at andrew.tangel@wsj.com and Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 20, 2025 16:27 ET (20:27 GMT)

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