The Other 98%
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about an hour ago
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The FAA suspended all flight departures across the United States on Friday afternoon, leaving more than 1.5 million travelers stranded just two weeks before Thanksgiving.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pointed to an “incredibly old” air traffic control system, three days after his agency launched a new $875 million AI traffic tool nationwide.
The ground stop began at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern and continued for about four hours. It was the first nationwide stoppage since January 2023, according to CNBC. By early evening, more than 2,000 flights had been canceled and over 10,000 delayed.
Airport terminals quickly became crowded. At Chicago’s O’Hare, travelers prepared to spend the night sleeping on the floor. In
Atlanta, the line of passengers waiting to retrieve their checked baggage extended past three entrances.
At LaGuardia, a Maine-bound aircraft remained on the tarmac for roughly four hours before being assigned a gate.
During a news conference Friday night, Duffy said overloaded routers within the aging system caused the outage, CBS News reported. Earlier that same day, the White House and his department had asked Congress for an additional $30.1 billion for aviation.
The AI tool, known as SMART, was activated at all 22 of the FAA’s regional control centers on Nov. 10. In October, more than two dozen members of Congress wrote to Duffy about air traffic controllers’ concerns regarding its rollout.
The company behind SMART maintains that it had nothing to do with Friday’s crash. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, however, told reporters he could not rule it out.
The network that failed is operated by private contractor L3Harris, according to CBS sources. Following an earlier outage in Dallas, the FAA said the same company “failed to ensure that redundancies in the system functioned properly.” In July, the FAA awarded L3Harris another contract running until 2045.
Officials have yet to explain what initiated Friday’s crash. Airlines expect approximately 2.7 million passengers per day over Thanksgiving.
