US flight outage live updates: FAA lifts nationwide ground stop as airport chaos continues in US and beyond
Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, acknowledges tech failure led federal aviation officials to shut down system and ground flights, though details are scarce US aviation agency lifts nationwide ground stop affecting all air travel Chaos at US airports as flight stoppage grinds travel plans to a halt Sign up for the Breaking News US email All US-bound departures from European airports…
On Friday, a major systems failure caused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue a nationwide ground stop, halting all air travel in the United States for over four hours. The cause of the telecommunications outage, which began in Chicago, remains unclear. This is only the second nationwide ground stop since the 9/11 attacks.
The FAA lifted the ground stop on Friday evening, allowing airlines to resume operations and attempt to recover from the disruption. American Airlines stated that it would operate as many flights as possible on Friday night and aim for a strong recovery in the days ahead.
European airports are also experiencing flight cancellations and delays due to the FAA's notice to suspend all US-bound departures from European airports until 5am UTC on Saturday. This notice was issued at the request of the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Several European cities, including Dublin, Copenhagen, London, Milan, Paris, and Rome, have seen planes bound for Europe departing from US airports such as Boston, New York, and Washington in the past two hours.
In Australia, a Guardian Australia reporter is currently aboard a plane at Sydney Airport, waiting to fly to the US. The plane has been held on the tarmac for up to three hours due to the FAA's concerns over landing planes once they reached the US. The reporter notes that the incident is causing significant disruption for thousands of air travelers both in the US and globally.
The FAA has advised customers to check the status of their flights through the airline's app or website. While Donald Trump did not make any public statements during the crisis, his transportation and homeland security secretaries, Sean Duffy and Markwayne Mullin, suggested that the outage was caused by older technology becoming overwhelmed with data after new technology was introduced by the FAA. However, they both emphasized that there is "zero evidence" that this was a cyber-attack.
Written by urgent.news from Guardian Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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