Nationwide FAA Ground Stop Lifted; Radar “Instability,” Old System Was Root Of Airspace Shutdown, Transportation Secretary Insists

The Federal Aviation Administration has “lifted” today’s nationwide grounding of flights. According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the root cause of the crisis was a radar “instability” issue that led to the shutting down this afternoon of domestic airspace. In great part, the antiquated system was overwhelmed, Duffy said. “It was the old hardware that went down” as routers overloaded, the Real World: Boston alum added, noting “none of the new systems went down.” “It is going to continue to fail,” Duffy asserted of the current system. Last year, Congress allocated over $12 billion to upgrade the admittedly aging air traffic system in Donald Trump‘s One Big Beautiful Bill. However, as Duffy turned the White House briefing into a partisan praise-a-thon of “builder” Trump and a demand for $50 billion more to upgrade the air traffic system, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin would not rule out today’s disruption was a cyber attack or AI attack. “We have seen zero evidence that this was a cyber attack or SI (Trump’s Super intelligence phrase) attack,” he added when pressed by reporters Watch on Deadline “Things seem to be working, as we say, in the right direction,” DHS Secretary Mullin said after the FAA made its decision to reopen the skies.. “We hope to have operations up and running as normal.” Both cabinet secretaries said it would take a while for flights to get back on schedule, with most planes likely to get up and going on Saturday morning. Pitching his $50 billion plan repeatedly, Duffy said that an economic analysis of the grounding has not yet been done, but will be undertaken. Since the FAA grounding was issued this afternoon and over 3,500 flights were taken out of the air , it is estimated that 1.5 million passengers are stranded at airports across the country. With information being so tight from the feds before tonight’s White House briefing, a “software update” has been floated as one possible explanation as has an AI system The 22 FAA-run Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) appear to have communication problems, with the spill over into the overall system unknown. To that, with 5,000 cancellations already announced, Delta has cut flights for the rest of the day, with more airlines expected to do so soon. A handful of international flights are being allowed, as are flights in and around Alaska and Hawaii because they run on different communications systems. The Transportation Secretary encouraged sports teams seekling to play games tomorrow to “reach out the FAA” to get them to their destinations Like they did on 9/11 over 25 years ago, Canada has said they will take in diverted US flights. On the flipside, international airports out of Vancouver (which usually sees a heavy Hollywood contingency on Friday nights as talent and producers head home to L.A. for the weekend) and Montreal are seeing “cancellations to U.S. destinations.”