The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time following thorough system testing, though officials warned it will take time to resolve widespread schedule disruptions. More than 11,000 flights were delayed or canceled before major carriers including United, Delta, Southwest, and American Airlines began resuming operations. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin emphasized that preliminary findings rule out hostile activity, linking the event strictly to telecommunications overloads. Meanwhile, state and federal lawmakers are scrutinizing the federal response, with California Governor Gavin Newsom criticiz…
Key points
Federal officials confirmed that the air traffic system shutdown was caused by internal e…: Federal officials confirmed that the air traffic system shutdown was caused by internal equipment overloads rather than a hostile cyberattack.
Transportation leaders are urging Congress to provide full funding to replace the country…: Transportation leaders are urging Congress to provide full funding to replace the country's aging air traffic control infrastructure.
Major domestic airlines will require significant time to recover schedules and unwind tra…: Major domestic airlines will require significant time to recover schedules and unwind travel backlogs despite the reopening of airspace.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted a nationwide ground stop that was declared Friday afternoon, delaying or canceling more than 11,000 US flights, according to aviation tracker FlightAware, and throwing airports into sudden chaos.
The FAA confirmed the airspace was open in an advisory on its website. “So at 8.15 tonight, Eastern Time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said. “But it’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon.”
Duffy said that the federal government has “identified the problem” that brought down the US air traffic control system on Friday and the system “is operational right now”.
The White House briefing Friday evening with Duffy and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, quickly turned into a plea for funding from Congress to “fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system”.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said. “Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers.…
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