The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) canceled a ground stop on all domestic flights hours after stopping departures at U.S. airports on Friday.
“We have old switches, old routers, we’re using old copper lines from the 1980s. We’re using an old system,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. “It was a legacy network issue.”
Even if the order is lifted, airlines will not be able to immediately resume normal operations because many of their planes and crews are out of position.
“It’s going to be slow,” Duffy told reporters at the White House.
Officials said they believe the system will return to normal in time for Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, one of the busiest times for U.S. travel.
It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when the FAA faced a system outage. Before that, the last ground stop took place after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the communications outage was the result of a cyberattack or artificial intelligence and that the public was never in danger.
More than 4,500 flights were canceled Friday and about 700 Saturday and more than 10,000 flights within, to or from the United States were delayed, according to aviation tracking system FlightAware.
What do we know so far?
“All departing traffic must remain stopped until further notice,” the FAA said Friday.
The agency said the ground check was “due to extraordinary circumstances and security reasons.” The FAA cited a temporary telecommunications outage and said: “Each flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis.” »
The agency said flights were halted “out of an abundance of caution.”
In an article on X, Duffy said the shutdown was due to a communications problem affecting all air traffic control centers.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as soon as we have them,” he wrote.
The FAA ground stop order came a day after Duffy asked Congress for $30 billion to improve and modernize the U.S. air traffic control system.
“This investment is critical to completing the modernization of our national airspace, providing resilient telecommunications infrastructure for air traffic controllers, modern hardware and software, state-of-the-art control towers, and world-class airport infrastructure,” Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
Flights from Europe facing widespread disruptions
The European Organization for Air Navigation Safety, Eurocontrol, urged airlines to issue delay notices for flights that were initially unable to take off.
Eurocontrol previously said all flights departing from US airports from its 42 member states had been suspended following a request from the FAA. He has since removed this note from his website.
Canada’s air navigation service provider, NAV Canada, said it was closely monitoring the U.S. ground stop and later said: “It was implementing traffic management measures at Toronto Pearson, Montreal-Trudeau, Calgary and Vancouver to safely manage traffic volumes.” »
“Travelers should expect delays and check with their airline. Our systems are operating normally,” NAV Canada added.
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