The United States on Friday lifted an hours-long ground stop at the nation's airports, with top officials explaining that the disruption was not due to a cyberattack or a sweeping Microsoft outage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that US airspace was now "opened up," and blamed "old hardware" for the travel chaos.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday night that airplane departures can resume after the agency lifted a nationwide ground stop that Trump administration officials blamed on “overloaded,” “outdated” systems.
Even with the order being lifted, the airlines will not be able to return to normal operations immediately because so many of their planes and crews are out of position.
The FAA had grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon, causing hundreds of flights to be diverted. Officials cited “extraordinary circumstances” caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system overwhelmed it. He couldn't rule out another outage.
The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and the second since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
There was no indication the communications failure was related to a cyberattack.
