Explainer
Why did the FAA stop all US flights at once?
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On Friday the FAA grounded every US flight. At Chicago O'Hare, planes taxiing back to their gates had nowhere to go, the New York Times reported.
Chicago
More than 1.5 million air passengers faced disruption, and Sean Duffy warned that getting planes back into the air would take some time.
1.5m
Duffy blamed obsolete routers overloaded with data, and Air Space Intelligence rejects that its AI was involved. On the stop, Mullin said: We did it out of an abundance of caution. He said new technology had overwhelmed an old system, and saw no sign yet of an attack.
“We did it out of an abundance of caution.”
Only twice before has the US halted flights nationwide: after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and in January 2023, when a key FAA computer system failed. This one is the third, and no official finding on the cause has been published.
- 11 September 2001Earlier nationwide halt
- January 2023Computer failure halt
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The story
FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after four-hour halt of all US flightsRead the article
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