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The nationwide ground stop implemented yesterday by the Federal Aviation Administration was ordered "out of an abundance of caution," FAA administrator Bryan Bedford confirmed Saturday morning, as the agency worked to investigate network instability that appeared late Friday afternoon.
The ground stop was only the third such national stoppage this century, with the first being Sept. 11, 2001, followed by one on Jan. 11, 2023, when an FAA safety alert system went down.
The instability appeared at 17 of 22 of the network's en-route control facilities, and no facility actually went dark. The FAA's investigative team isolated specific routers that might have been faulty and shut those down as a precaution so the network would stabilize. The four-hour ground stop was purely a precaution to investigate the issues.
"We did that because we felt it was helpful to remove pressure from the system, holding airplanes on the ground while we continued to work through the root cause analysis of the instability in the system, and ultimately to relieve stress and complexity in the airspace," Bedford explained. "I think that was the right call, and we stand by that.
"I do think we've identified the fault," Bedford continued, "and I want to reiterate: We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related."
The issue had nothing to do with the new AI platform recently launched by the FAA, added Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. "A couple of months ago, we deployed our SMART system to help us better navigate weather and trajectories," he said. "This is a system that's not tied into or connected to the systems that went down yesterday. It's a tool that gives us a prompt to flight managers, that they can accept or deny, but it's just better information sent to them. But there is no connection from this tool, so SMART had zero impact on the occurrences yesterday."
Ground stop travel impact
According to Bedford, about 50,000 flights were originally scheduled to depart Friday, and about 30,000 of those flights had completed when the ground stop went into effect at 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time.
Out of the 20,000 flights still scheduled when the ground stop began, about 8,000 of them ultimately departed. So 12,000 flights were canceled entirely, with about 9,000 of those being commercial flights.
"This morning, the system remains stable, and our airline partners are working through the operational recovery," Bedford said. "We do anticipate somewhere 4 - 5,000 of the 41,000 flights that are scheduled today likely will cancel, so delays and cancellations will continue. But that will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow."
Airlines expect to be fully back on schedule by the close of business Sunday, according to Bedford.
Ongoing investigation into cause
Bedford confirmed that all signs point to this being an equipment issue that served remote parts of the flight-control network. "We're working through what this defective piece of equipment was," he said. "Was it a faulty installation? Was it a faulty configuration? Or was it just a bad piece of router technology that we put into the system that propagated these errors? When we have that root cause analysis complete, we'll share it with you."
Both Bedford and Duffy specified that the issue occurred on the old analog network that is being maintained as funding continues to be sought for the digital modernization of the system.
Weekend sports scramble
The ground stop had a significant effect on a busy weekend sports schedule, resulting in changes to a number of NCAA football games, as well as outstanding questions for NBA and NHL games.
U.S. Travel urges action
In the wake of the nationwide travel disruption, the U.S. Travel Association called on Congress to pass the Modern Skies Act before the end of this session, echoing Secretary Duffy's plea during this morning's press conference.
“Secretary Duffy is absolutely correct about the funding and focus needed to build the world-class aviation system Americans deserve," said U.S. Travel president and CEO Geoff Freeman. "Yesterday’s nationwide ground stop is yet another clear signal that the Federal Aviation Administration lacks the resources necessary to modernize America’s aging aviation infrastructure."