{
  "id": 19928411,
  "title": "‘It could be Selma Blair’: Bill Maher jokes about her flight arrest after FAA outage",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/14/it-could-be-selma-blair-bill-maher-jokes-about-her-flight-arrest",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-11-14T05:56:46.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Indian Express",
    "slug": "the-indian-express",
    "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/hollywood/bill-maher-jokes-about-selma-blair-flight-arrest-after-faa-outage-10962644/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "After a communications outage halted most flight departures for more than four hours across the United States, operations resumed shortly after. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) blamed the disturbance on \"extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety,\" comedian Bill Maher took to his show Real Time to joke about a possible reason for the disruption. Referring to actress Selma Blair, Maher said, \"It could be Selma Blair, we just don't know.\"\n\nThis was not the first time Maher had connected Selma Blair's name to unusual events. A month prior, Blair was arrested at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport after allegedly attempting to open the emergency exit door of a Delta Air Lines flight while it was airborne. The incident, which involved assaulting two flight attendants, led to her detention and subsequent hospitalization. Blair later apologized for her actions, stating she had no intention of causing harm.\n\nThe FAA ground stop on November 13, 2022, affected over 10,000 flights, with some being diverted and thousands of passengers stranded at airports nationwide. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to outdated network infrastructure, citing old switches, routers, and copper lines that had been overwhelmed with data, causing instability in radar information and communications with aircraft.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [
    "Bill Maher joked about Selma Blair's flight arrest during FAA outage",
    "Selma Blair arrested for allegedly opening emergency exit door on Delta flight",
    "FAA outage affected over 10,000 flights and stranded thousands of passengers"
  ],
  "editors_take": "Maher's commentary highlights how public figures become shorthand for chaos, even as the underlying FAA outage reveals a systemic vulnerability caused by outdated transportation infrastructure and aging network hardware.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}