United States: takeoffs halted for over 4 hours nationwide
· BehindLines newsroom
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered takeoffs stopped across most of the country on Friday 13 November, then lifted the measure in the evening. According to The Verge and Wired, a communications problem is behind it. Wired calls the episode the worst nationwide ground stop since 11 September 2001.
How it unfolded
According to The Verge, the FAA declared the stop at 15:44 Eastern time "due to extraordinary circumstances", while aircraft already in the air could land. Shortly after 17:00, it referred to a temporary telecommunications outage. The lifting was announced at 20:15, more than four hours after the measure began; Wired, for its part, speaks of a five-hour stop. Journalist Jon Ostrower, quoted by The Verge, reports that the difficulties began at the Chicago control center before reaching Boston, Washington, New York and Minneapolis, disrupting radar and radio frequencies.
The disruption
According to The Verge, FlightAware counted about 9,124 delayed and 5,901 cancelled flights at 20:39 Wired says that, when the stop was lifted, more than 6,300 flights were cancelled and 9,500 delayed, according to FlightAware, and that freight and mail flights were also affected. These two counts were not taken at the same moment. Wired adds that airlines will probably need days, even weeks, to reposition aircraft and crews.
The cause put forward
Wired says several outlets link the incident to a failure of the FTI network, the private backbone of air traffic control communications, which is being modernised: the old copper cables are being replaced with fibre. According to The Verge, a CBS News report pointed to an update of the air traffic control private communications network, operated by L3Harris, that would have caused a system reboot. Federal officials spoke at press briefings of old equipment overloaded with data. An official quoted by Wired said nothing pointed to a cyberattack, while acknowledging that certainty was not complete. The Verge adds that the company Air Space Intelligence denied any link to its SMART system. No definitive cause was confirmed in these articles.
Why it matters
According to The Verge, citing CNN, the last nationwide stop, in 2023, lasted about 90 minutes after the outage of the notice system for pilots, and the one before that dated back to the attacks of 11 September 2001. According to Wired, the delays will continue over the coming days.