FAA ground stop overloaded routers US flights, Digi Mart USA News: The Federal Aviation Administration halted all departures from US airports on a Friday evening after communication issues at several Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that manage high-altitude traffic. The ground stop began at 3:54 p.m.
ET and was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET, according to the FAA statement.
Aircraft already in the air were allowed to land.
Flightradar24 counted just 336 flights bound for US airports at the low point, compared with more than 3,600 at that time of day. At a White House news conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed aging equipment, saying the routers became overloaded with data and began producing inconsistent information, prompting the FAA to shut the system down.
He pointed to older copper lines and said none of the newly installed equipment failed.
Multiple sources told CBS News that an update to the private communications network behind US air traffic control caused the system to reboot and then crash. That network, the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI), is operated by L3Harris.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new security patches on the older system appeared to overwhelm its routers.
The weakness was documented earlier. According to CBS, a safety review commissioned by the FAA in November 2023 described the FTI network as obsolete.
The review relies on the description of an older technology known as TDM, which the underlying telecom infrastructure no longer supports, and warned that an unexpected failure could cut off individual facilities or an entire regional control center from the network.
Earlier the same day, a global Microsoft outage affected Xbox sign-ins, saves and Cloud Gaming, and also disrupted rail operations in Germany. Mullin rejected any connection between the two, saying there was no sign of a cyberattack so far but that the investigation was ongoing.
The FAA said it tested its systems before clearing flights to resume.
Cancellations were expected to continue through the weekend. As of 11:30 p.m.
ET on Friday, Flightradar24 counted nearly 10,000 canceled flights to and from US airports through Saturday, including more than 2,200 each at Delta and American Airlines. Travelers should check their flight status with their airline.
Duffy is asking Congress for $50 billion to fully overhaul air traffic control technology, warning, according to ABC News, that there will be more such failures unless the system is rebuilt.
