Earlier this week on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration reported what seems to be the biggest system failure in recent history and they’re working on restoring order to regular airline operations.
An investigation showed the stoppage was caused by a corrupted file in the database; although the FAA officials claim that no cyberattack was involved.
All domestic flights come to a stop as FAA deals with airport chaos
By the end of Wednesday, nearly 5,000 delays were reported across the country, in or out of the country, 900 of which were canceled by 10 AM.
Good news, neither Biden or Mayor Pete know why the world’s busiest airspace was shutdown today. pic.twitter.com/qi4ePSLr7H
— @amuse (@amuse) January 11, 2023
Almost 21,000 flights were expected to take off today, as revealed by airline data company Cerium.
However, FAA guidelines urged all domestic departures to be paused until 9 AM ET; although recent information revealed that the ground stop has been removed.
Many have pointed out this outage was the biggest shutdown in the country ever since the 9/11 terror attack happened.
Tim Campbell, the former VP of air operations at American Airlines, claimed the issue to be of historical significance; it stands out from the plethora of local issues that happen from time to time.
In addition to this, former FFA official Michael McCormick stated the recent developments were unheard of and the action taken by the administration makes it that much more significant.
Hmm, meanwhile in America
The entire nation's airline industry is currently grounded
A computer glitch has shut down the National Airspace System
I hear it's no big deal
Maybe our next President will nominate a Secretary of Transportation
You know, someone with experience🥳
— James Rosone – Amazon KDP All-Star Author (@jamesrosone) January 11, 2023
Frustrated passengers
Despite the fact the ground stop was lifted, it didn’t stop the stranded passengers from recording their experiences on social media, with LA travelers reporting full planes were stuck on the tarmac for hours on end.
Twitter user Cindy Harrison said her flight was pushed back several hours; she was expecting to see grumpy passengers at the airport bar, but she was pleasantly surprised.
The majority of the stranded passengers were sleeping where they initially sat down as the airport lobby became crowded with people waiting for additional information from officials.
Others weren’t as relaxed as Cindy though and were frantically making calls to reschedule or cancel their flight and hotel reservations.
Last year, we had historic supply chain disruptions, while the Sec of Transportation was on paternity leave.
Then, nearly a rail strike.
Now, the first airline halt since 9/11.
Seriously, in your lifetime, can you think of a Sec of Transportation who’s screwed things up worse?
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 12, 2023
Alma Clarke, who was much less optimistic about the situation, claimed the attendants kept repeating the same information for hours, without any updates that would calm the chaos.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke up on the matter, claiming an after-action process is already underway to determine the root cause of the outage.
He added that the FAA’s safety system is fully restored and the ground stop that affected the entire nation will be lifted immediately.
Apart from Buttigieg, President Joe Biden also announced he’ll be launching an investigation into the system outage that the FAA experienced.
However, nobody is expecting too much from the two most incompetent parts of this administration. It is likely just a matter of time before another crisis emerges.
This article appeared in Our Patriot and has been published here with permission.
