US Nationwide Ground Stop: Outdated Air Traffic System Overwhelmed By New Technology, Says Trump Admin

The Trump administration has attributed the five-hour nationwide flight ground stop across the United States to outdated air traffic control infrastructure being overwhelmed by new technology, which triggered intermittent communication and radar disruptions.

The stoppage, the longest of its kind in 25 years, was lifted on Friday evening after thousands of flights were affected and potentially more than a million passengers faced travel disruptions. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a cyberattack or any other deliberate interference.

Mullin said the FAA was installing “new equipment, new technology” and “it was overwhelming the older system,” Associated Press reported. He told reporters at the White House that more than 3,000 flights had been safely landed and no one was in danger.

However, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy cautioned that similar disruptions could occur again, even as officials expressed confidence that the system would be ready for the Thanksgiving travel rush. Mullin said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was installing new equipment and technology when the upgraded systems put excessive pressure on older infrastructure.

Asked whether a cyberattack or rogue artificial intelligence (AI) incident could have caused the disruption, Mullin said investigators had found no "footprints" indicating an attack. He described the problem as appearing to be "mechanically driven", while adding that officials were still investigating its precise cause, AP reported.

Duffy clarified that Friday's outage was not connected to the FAA's new AI-powered system, which is being rolled out to predict potential problems in the skies. "This is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that's been deployed did not go down," Duffy said.

Although the ground stop was lifted on Friday evening, only a limited number of domestic flights began departing shortly afterwards. Airlines could take several days to restore normal operations because aircraft and crew members were left out of position.

According to aviation analytics company Cirium, at least 827 flights had been diverted. By 7:05 pm EST, 670 flights had been sent back to their original departure airports, while 157 were redirected to different airports.

Several flights were diverted to locations including Washington Dulles International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Nashville International Airport. Duffy said more than 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the ground stop was imposed.

Around 11,000 flights carrying over 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart US airports after 4 pm EST. Duffy blamed Congress for not providing sufficient funding to modernise the country's ageing air traffic control infrastructure, arguing that delays in upgrading the system were increasing risks.

"By doing nothing, you inject way more risk into the system," he said. The transportation secretary acknowledged that officials had not anticipated an outage of this scale but said the system was restored after authorities reviewed the problem and rebooted it.

"We didn't think we would have this kind of outage. We did," he said, adding, "We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these," the report quoted Duffy as saying.

Duffy expects flights to return to normal ahead of the Thanksgiving travel rush next weekend, although he did not rule out further disruptions.