The FAA lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday after a communications failure at air traffic control centers caused chaos at US airports and triggered the longest shutdown since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said US airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time (0115 GMT), but warned that departures would resume gradually and it would take time for airlines to restore normal operations.
The Misinformation Monitor newsletter rounds up international misinformation narratives, with a “Real or Fake?” quiz in every edition. Sign up here.
“It’s going to be slow,” Duffy told reporters at the White House.
More than 6,600 flights were cancelled and 8,600 delayed, with another 1,500 already canceled for Sunday, according to FlightRadar24.
Aviation analysts said the four-hour nationwide grounding could disrupt airline schedules for days.
Duffy said tens of thousands of passengers were stranded at airports around the country.
Duffy said he and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss the outage.
The failure is the latest and most dramatic sign of strain on a US air traffic control system beset by aging technology, equipment and communications problems and a shortage of several thousand controllers.
Duffy said the trouble began at 3:36 p.m., when air traffic control centres experienced instability in radar and communications systems.
“Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data from those routers and because of that we shut the system down,” Duffy said, adding that at no stage did they completely lose radar or communications and they were able to safely land thousands of planes.
Duffy said the immediate problem had been fixed and that flying was safe, but warned that a broader overhaul of the aging air traffic control system was needed to prevent similar failures.
Source: Reuters
READ ALSO:
Keyamo to unveil biometric passenger verification system at Lagos airport
Kano confirms 12 diphtheria cases at boarding school
2027: Tinubu condemns political violence, says campaigns must focus on issues
Pre-subscription opens for Sovereignty Call, Sundiata Post’s new publication
Makinde’s interview exposes his cluelessness in making economy productive -SSACO
Arokodare nets brace as Super Eagles dispatch Tanzania 3-1
Ebola: 62 contacts complete monitoring without secondary transmission -NCDC
Ogun 2027: Court orders INEC to publish Adebutu’s name
NAFDAC seals four warehouses, detains two suspects in Kano
Troops rescue 22 people, arrest suspects in multiple operations
UNN: Governor orders probe into death, to ban sign-out parties
ECOWAS seeks deeper security partnership with Nigerian military