President Trump was informed within 30 minutes after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon, according to U.S. officials.
THE ground stop resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights and the stranding of travelers across the United States. The FAA announced that all planes would be grounded at 3:36 p.m. ET, when 3,500 flights were airborne.
Within minutes, the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command, the FAA, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency began looping around.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement to 4:16 p.m. ET that the ground stop was necessary due to a “communications issue affecting all air traffic control centers” and that FAA technicians were investigating. Within minutes, the White House was calling agencies to determine what had happened. A game plan was put in place.
The intelligence community quickly ruled out the possibility of nefarious activity after searching for conversations or pings on its various channels. Nothing happened.
Senior officials briefed Mr. Trump, who was attending an economic policy meeting, a U.S. official said. Staff relayed their directives to others during the multi-team call, led by Stephen Miller, White House chief of staff.
Mr. Trump later met with Duffy and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images 
Mr. Trump began calling on congressional leaders on Friday to work toward obtaining the FAA. more funding. The White House congressional team has called key members of Congress to work with them on air traffic controller modernization.
The Homeland Security Council invited key government members and some outside stakeholders to a meeting Monday to discuss next steps and what should be done to prevent this from happening again as modernization efforts continue.
The council is an interagency government body responsible for coordinating national internal security policy. Created by President George W. Bush in 2001, under the current White House structure, the Council operates within the framework of the National Security Council and can draw on senior officials from agencies such as the Department of Transportation, the FAA, DHS and the Department of Defense.
But not all planes were grounded during the four-hour shutdown: Medical services flights were given the green light to head to their planned destinations.
After the fourth hour, the system problem had been identified and the immobilization was lifted. About 9,159 flights were canceled Friday and 7,190 were delayed, according to FlightAware.
At a news conference Saturday, Duffy said the problems apparently began while FAA telecommunications contractor L3Harris Technologies was performing maintenance upgrades at a remote facility, replacing aging copper communications lines with fiber optic connections. During this work, one router began generating more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, overwhelming routers throughout the FAA network.
Mullin and Duffy were more than 30 minutes late for a 7:45 p.m. ET news conference Friday because they were about to lift the grounding and did not want to interrupt their efforts to hold back the presser, U.S. officials said.
Although federal officials have identified a likely sequence of events behind Friday’s disruption, key questions remain about the underlying cause of the system-wide failure.
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