APPLENEWS - STORY ADD
FAA ground stop live updates: Duffy blames 'overloaded' routers; thousands of flights canceled
The DHS secretary said there were no indications of a cyberattack.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a rare nationwide ground stop for all airports Friday -- a more than four-hour disruption that snarled travel from coast to coast with canceled flights and stranded passengers.
At a White House news conference Friday night, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed old technology that became overloaded and called on Congress to provide billions more in funding to modernize critical equipment, calling the situation an "emergency."
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters there was no indication the incident stemmed from a cyberattack, but that officials were still investigating.
Thousands of flights were canceled amid the ground stop.
"I believe that it's going to take us some time to get back to capacity," Duffy said when asked how long air travelers should expect delays and cancellations to continue.
Key Headlines
- 'You will have more of these' unless system upgraded, Duffy says of outage that led to ground stop
- Duffy makes plea for funding: 'This is an emergency'
- Will 'take time' to make up for disruptions: Duffy
- 'Inconsistency' in data led to ground stop: Duffy
- 'No cyberattack,' Mullin says
- Nationwide ground stop lifted, FAA says
'Nothing completely certain' on cyberattack, Mullin says
Pressed on whether the administration can say with 100% certainty this wasn't a cyberattack, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin responded, "There's nothing completely certain right now," then said, "It doesn't appear that way."
"There is nothing that indicates it yet," he continued, saying there hasn't been any evidence of an entity claiming to be behind one.
"It appears that this was mechanically driven. However, we're still looking, so we're not going to rule that out," Mullin said.
'Inconsistency' in data led to ground stop: Duffy
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that "inconsistency" in data from routers in the air traffic control system led to the FAA issuing a nationwide ground stop Friday.
At 3:36 p.m, "we experienced instability for our radar and our communications in our centers and our TRACONs across the country," he said, referring to Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities.
Duffy described an "incredibly old air traffic control system" that uses analog telecom.
"Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data ... and started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down," he said.
'No cyberattack,' Mullin says
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reiterated that there was "no cyberattack" at the top of a press briefing Friday on the ground stop.
"I just want to reiterate this: The public was never at danger through this process. There was never any lives at risk. There was no flights at risk," he said.
Nationwide ground stop lifted, FAA says
The FAA said the nationwide ground stop is over, after more than four hours.