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FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after over four hours; cyber and AI links probed
The FAA lifted its nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET on Friday 13 November after over four hours. Duffy blamed legacy telecom gear, the SMART AI maker denied any link, and Homeland Security is reviewing cyber and AI possibilities.
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The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, 13 November, more than four hours after it halted departures at every US airport. Officials tied the stoppage to communication failures at air traffic control facilities. Investigators are now looking at whether a cyberattack or artificial intelligence played any role.
Controllers had reported frequency and communication dropouts, which affected several air route traffic control centers. That prompted the FAA to stop flights from taking off anywhere in the country. Officials said afterwards that the centers had suffered "communication issues" and that no threat had been detected.
The stoppage was the first of its scale since January 2023. It also ranks as only the second nationwide halt of this kind since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Counts of the disruption differ. Some tallies put the number of departures disrupted at nearly 500, with thousands of passengers stranded. Others cite about 10,000 flights affected. Flights resumed once the order was lifted, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that cancellations and long delays would continue.
Duffy points to legacy telecom gear
Duffy said the outage traced back to ageing infrastructure rather than anything new. He described an old TDM analog system, copper lines, routers and switches that became overwhelmed with data. In his account, the equipment that carries communications between controllers and the wider network could not handle the load.
He used the episode to press for major federal funding to overhaul the network. The FAA's communications backbone, he argued, relies on technology that is long past its intended life. No funding figure or timetable was given in the material available on Friday night and Saturday.
The explanation matters to travellers because it points to a fault that sits in the network itself and could, in principle, recur wherever the same equipment is in use. Duffy's remarks did not say which centers were hit first or how the failure spread.
Attention turned quickly to a new tool. The SMART system, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, had been rolled out across all 22 air traffic control centers only days before the outage. It was developed by Air Space Intelligence, and speculation on social media linked it to the failure.
The company rejected that. Air Space Intelligence said the ground stop was "not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC." Reports on the FAA's position said the agency ruled out SMART as the cause and pointed instead to problems with aging air traffic control equipment.
The timing explains why the question was asked at all. A system built on artificial intelligence had gone live across the whole network just before the first nationwide stop in more than three years. Officials have not, in the material available, described any evidence connecting the two.
Homeland Security keeps the probe open
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials were examining every possible contributor to the outage. That includes whether a cyberattack or artificial intelligence had a hand in it. He said there was no immediate indication of a malicious attack, but he kept the options open while the review continues.
Mullin also moved to calm public concern. "This is not another 9/11," the Homeland Security Department said in its comments on the day, according to the remarks reported from Friday.
So the official picture on Saturday has three parts. The Transportation Department blames overloaded legacy equipment. The vendor of the new AI system says it had nothing to do with the stoppage. And the Department of Homeland Security has not closed off any line of inquiry, including a cyber or AI cause, until its review is finished.
For passengers, the immediate effect is a backlog. Cancellations and delays were expected to run on after the stop was lifted, as airlines worked to reposition aircraft and crews after more than four hours with no departures anywhere in the country. Duffy's call for money to replace the old network is the next policy step he has flagged, while the investigation's findings are still to come.
About the Author
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Prateek Rawat
Staff Writer
Prateek Rawat is a contributor to Wirony. All articles published under this byline undergo editorial review and approval before publication, with any necessary corrections handled…
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