U.S. cabinet officials said Friday the incident was a communications problem, not an indicator of an attack or emergency.
PrevNextThe Federal Air traffic at U.S. airports Friday. U.S. officials say the root cause was a communications problem. (Scripps News)
The Federal AU.S. air traffic, ending a multi-hour incident that halted flights after an air traffic communications issue
The stop began shortly before 4 p.m. Eastern Time and was lifted shortly after 8 p.m.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday night federal agencies were responding to the disruption.
“The public was never in danger through this process,” he said. He said the stop was instituted due to an abundance of caution.
“There is nothing that indicates” the incident was caused by a cyberattack, Mullin said. “It appears this was mechanically driven.”
“We have seen zero evidence that this was a cyberattack,” Mullin repeated.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stop was due to “instability” in systems responsible for radar and communications at major traffic control facilities across the U.S.
More than 3,500 flights were airborne at the time of the stop, and all safely landed, Duffy said.
He said he believed the disruption would not extend into the Thanksgiving travel season.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said, saying communications hardware began to lose effectiveness under the weight of traffic. He also said the ground stop was put in place out of an abundance of caution as pressure increased on the system.
He then called for Congress to grant funding to repair and update more of the air traffic control network.
“I think America demands that Congress give the rest of the re
“It’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon,” he said.
“This is an emergency. I want Congress to give us emergency funding,” Duffy said. He called for $50 billion from Congress to address repairs for the aging system.
“You will have more of these, you will have more of them, unless the American people and Congress tells us to build,” he said. “And I can’t wait for that.”
‘This isn’t another 9/11’: DHS secretary reassures public after ground stop
The stop required that all air traffic set to depart U.S. airports remain grounded. Any flights already airborne would be allowed to proceed to their destinations.
Those flights continued to land across the U.S. without incident on Friday afternoon, according to messages from major airports.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday afternoon the FAA “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue.”
Airlines began to announce Friday evening that some flights for the day would be canceled as the outage stretched on for hours.
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An air traffic controller who spoke to Scripps News on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak publicly, said at approximately 3:36pm Eastern Time, they received notice of a frequency issue prompting a ground stop at one airport on the East Coast. Within minutes, two additional control towers reported similar issues. Shortly thereafter the nationwide stop was announced.
The individual said at this point, controllers have not yet been told what caused the specific issue or what fixes are underway. They said that some airports appear to be able to continue operations as normal, though others remain impacted by the technological problem.
“Everyone knows frequencies went down somewhere but no one seems to have actually lost theirs,” the controller told Scripps News.
The “Everyone texting their friends to figure out what’s up and no one knows.”
A congressional official told Scripps News neither the White House nor the Department of Defense were aware of the cause of the incident.
“We talked to both the WH/NSC and DOD…and neither know why this is happening. Which, I guess, leads me to believe that it’s not a national security problem so much as an FAA problem,” the
Sen. Maria Cantwell, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, said the committee planned to review the communications technologies used by airplanes and traffic control.
https://x.com/FAANews/status/2121363171361575176
The last time the U.S. announced a nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, due to FAA computer malfunctions. The last stop before that was in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The FAA is in the middle of a systems overhaul, spending $12.5 billion to replace old physical and radio networks with new technology. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA is likely to need Congressional approval for another $30 billion to complete the work.
Airports address the ground stop
Airports nationwide posted messages to travelers Friday acknowledging the ground stop and offering advice as the situation evolved:
https://x.com/ATLairport/status/2121354583150838044
https://x.com/DFWAirport/status/2121357895799640229
https://x.com/flyLAXairport/status/2121362541368758740
This is a breaking news story. Stay with Scripps News for continued updates.
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