US air traffic resumes after hours-long nationwide ground stop
The US Federal Aviation Administration has lifted a nationwide ground stop that halted flights for hours. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed outdated air traffic control equipment and Congress's reluctance to fund upgrades.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US agency that oversees civil aviation, lifted a nationwide ground stop on November 13 after several hours. The restriction began in the afternoon and temporarily halted all flights across the country. Hundreds of flights were canceled, thousands of aircraft already in the air were diverted, and millions of passengers were stranded. The FAA ended the suspension at 8:15 PM Eastern time.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy then held a press conference, blaming old equipment and Congress's unwillingness to fund its modernization for the disruption. He said the country's "incredibly old air traffic control system" had malfunctioned.
What went wrong
The US still relies on TDM telecom, a legacy analog communications technology, to pass information between air traffic facilities. According to Duffy, the routers became "overloaded with data," and at 3:36 PM on November 13 they began transmitting inconsistent information. He said only the old equipment was affected, not the units that had already been replaced. The secretary also clarified that the US had not lost all communications and radar, but the FAA grounded flights out of an abundance of caution.
"It's going to continue to fail," Duffy told reporters about the air traffic control system, as quoted by The New York Times. "How many times does this have to happen for Congress to give the money to fix it?"
Funding and security questions
The FAA has issued ground stops only three times this century, and this one was the second longest after the September 11 attacks. Congress has already given the FAA $12.5 billion to modernize air traffic facilities, while Duffy is seeking $30 billion more.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared alongside Duffy and said there was no indication that a cyberattack caused the communication problems. He added that his department was "still looking" and was "not going to rule it out." Mullin also said the incident was unrelated to the outage that took down Microsoft's services for more than 24 hours.
