US reopens airspace after flight disruption, rules out cyberattack

The United States has reopened its airspace following an hours-long ground stop at the nation's airports on Friday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated during a late-night briefing at the White House that the airspace was opened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time, though he warned that clearing the resulting travel chaos would be a slow process.

Officials attributed the disruption to old hardware, specifically noting that switches and routers became overloaded with data and went down. New Straits Times reports that the breakdown occurred one day after Duffy and the White House formally requested $30 billion from Congress to modernize the US Air Traffic Control System.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed speculation regarding a coordinated cyberattack on the United States. According to New Straits Times, Mullin also insisted there was no connection between the disruption and the Microsoft outage that affected services worldwide. Duffy maintained that it remained safe for Americans to fly.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch Nigeria, Punch, New Straits Times — 3 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.