FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after five-hour outage as Trump administration blames ageing systems

Flights across the US reopened after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted an hours-long ground stop following a major communications failure that the Trump administration said stemmed from antiquated systems and overwhelmed technology.

Air travel was disrupted nationwide by airline delays and cancellations, and passengers were uncertain about their schedules.

The lack of service was caused by communications systems that use old technology, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. Administration officials dismissed concerns that the outage was a result of a malicious attack.

The episode raised new questions regarding the reliability of the country’s aviation system and the need to overhaul mechanisms governing the flight of planes.

The FAA lifted the ground stop once the systems were restored, and flights resumed back to normal. However, airlines anticipated the delays to persist as they cleared the backlog of flights.

The FAA said the ground stop was lifted on Friday evening after some five hours, and departures resumed. But airlines said returning to normal was expected to take days, as planes and crews had been displaced by the halt.

According to the Associated Press, the outage affected thousands of flights, which may have impacted over 1.5 million travellers. Authorities said there was no indication of a cyberattack, but the cause was still being investigated.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the public had not been endangered, while Duffy said more outages could happen. The outage has spurred renewed calls for the government to speed up the programme to upgrade the country’s ageing air traffic control system.