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The White House assured the public that "there were never any lives at risk" during a nationwide ground stop issued for all U.S. airports on Friday. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated at a White House briefing that the ground stop was a precautionary measure and not due to a cyberattack. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the issue to "an incredibly old air traffic control system," as reported by Al Jazeera.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted the ground stop after more than four hours, citing a "communication issue" that affected all 22 air route traffic control centers. According to Yahoo News, the incident led to over 10,000 flight delays and more than 4,000 cancellations. The FAA stated that international flights were managed on a case-by-case basis.
Mullin emphasized that there was no indication of a threat to the U.S., saying, "Everybody's safe. The flights are accounted for." He also mentioned that President Donald Trump was "fully engaged" in responding to the situation, despite not addressing the public directly.
Duffy explained that the outdated air traffic control system, which relies on "1980s little copper lines," was overwhelmed, leading to the communication failure. He called for Congress to provide additional funding to modernize the infrastructure, as reported by WCVB.
The FBI does not believe a cyberattack caused the failure, and investigators are examining whether a software update might have triggered the outage. Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth has called for a "thorough and complete investigation" into the FAA's communication issues.
The ground stop was the first nationwide halt since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. The FAA's recent rollout of the SMART system, an AI tool for air traffic management, was not responsible for the outage, according to Yahoo News.