The FAA lifted a nationwide flight ground stop after an air traffic control outage disrupted travel. Officials confirmed no cyberattack occurred, noting that network equipment got overloaded with data. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, “Switches, routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down,” causing the major system failure.
Synopsis
The FAA lifted a nationwide flight ground stop following a communication outage affecting air traffic control. Officials confirmed there was no cyberattack related to the incident or evidence of malicious activity. The disruption resulted from network equipment overload instead of total telecommunications or radar system failure.
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted its nationwide flight ground stop after an air traffic control communication outage disrupted operations across the United States, with officials ruling out a cyberattack and saying the public was never in danger.
US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no connection between the incident and Microsoft and confirmed that investigators had found no evidence of a cyberattack.
“There is no cyberattack,” Mullin said, adding that officials were still working through the process of understanding what happened.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the disruption was caused by overloaded network equipment rather than a complete loss of telecommunications or radar systems.
“Switches, routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down,” Duffy said.