The Federal Aviation Administration ordered nationwide departures grounded starting at 3:54 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday after a telecommunications failure hit air route traffic control centres. The collapse occurred when 1980s copper lines and outdated routers failed under data overloads, resulting in more than 4,700 cancellations and roughly 10,000 delays on Friday alone. Although the halt was lifted Friday evening and cyberattacks were ruled out, an additional 700 flights were cancelled on Saturday as airlines struggled to recover. A September Government Accountability Office report had explicitly warned that cables dating back to the 1960s posed severe disruption risks due to poorly sche…
Key points
The system collapse was caused by data overloads on ageing routers and copper wiring rath…: The system collapse was caused by data overloads on ageing routers and copper wiring rather than a foreign cyberattack.
Federal watchdogs had already warned the government that rushed telecommunications transi…: Federal watchdogs had already warned the government that rushed telecommunications transitions and 1960s cables created major operational risks.
Flight schedules required extended recovery periods even though the emergency ground stop…: Flight schedules required extended recovery periods even though the emergency ground stop was officially lifted on Friday evening.
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An ageing air traffic control network, relying on decades-old copper cables, outdated switches and routers, was at the centre of a major disruption that brought US flight departures to a nationwide halt for five hours on Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed the ground stop citing “extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety”, after a telecommunications outage affected air route traffic control centres across the country.
The disruption, which was the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years and only the second such shutdown since the September 11, 2001, attacks, grounded thousands of flights and left passengers stranded at airports. The FAA lifted the order on Friday evening (local time), but officials warned that restoring normal flight operations would take time.
Old tech behind outage
US transportation secretary Sean Duffy said the outage occurred after switches and routers became overloaded with data and failed. Officials acknowledged that the introduction of new technology had put additional pressure on older components of the air traffic control network, resulting in intermittent communication and radar gaps.
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