The United States has reopened its airspace after a major technical disruption grounded flights across the country for several hours, with officials blaming ageing equipment rather than a cyberattack.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Friday night that the ground stop had been lifted, although he warned that passengers would continue to experience delays as airlines worked to clear the backlog.
Speaking during a late-night briefing at the White House, Duffy said US airspace had officially reopened at 8.15pm Eastern Time.
“At 8:15 tonight Eastern Time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” he said.
However, he cautioned that normal flight operations would take time to resume, adding that passengers should not expect every delayed flight to depart immediately.
The disruption came just a day after Duffy and the White House formally asked Congress to approve $30bn to upgrade and modernise the country’s ageing air traffic control system.
Explaining the cause of the disruption, Duffy said outdated network equipment had become overwhelmed by data, leading to the failure of switches and routers.
“Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down,” he said.
He used the incident to renew calls for investment in modern air traffic control infrastructure, questioning whether Congress was prepared to fund the necessary improvements.
Despite the disruption, Duffy insisted that the situation did not mean flying was unsafe for Americans.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also dismissed speculation that the disruption was caused by a coordinated cyberattack against the United States.
He equally rejected claims linking the incident to a Microsoft outage that had affected services in different parts of the world.
“Welcome to Friday the 13th, right? You know, I want to make sure everybody understands that there is no connection between this and Microsoft. I know a lot of people are making that jump,” Mullin said.
He added that there was no evidence of a cyberattack, noting that security agencies had not detected the usual signs of a coordinated digital assault.
“When we start looking at cyber threats, cyberattacks, typically some people are going to raise their hand up and say, ‘Hey, we did that.’ There’s no chatter. We haven’t seen any footprints,” he said.
However, Mullin stressed that US security and law enforcement agencies were continuing their investigations and had not ruled out any possibility.
The two officials also defended President Donald Trump over criticism of his response to the disruption, which had begun several hours before the White House briefing.
Mullin said the president had been briefed and was in contact with relevant officials as the situation unfolded.
“President Trump immediately had people in his office. We were communicating,” he said.
The reopening of US airspace is expected to ease the disruption, although airlines and passengers may continue to face delays as normal operations return.
Agency report
