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Thousands of flights across the USA grounded on Friday the 13th following a major communications failure in the country's air traffic control system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) a nationwide ground stop after problems with radar and communications equipment. More than 3,500 airplanes in the air at the time. Thousands of flights were cancelled, passengers stranded at airports nationwide. The problem eventually to an overloaded router, possibly as a result of maintenance work to decades-old copper wires with fibre-optic cables. The FAA the ground stop almost five hours later. Operations may days to to normal.

The incident widespread concern. Officials quickly the public that it was not another 9/11. The US homeland security secretary said there had no indication of a cyberattack or national security threat. He the incident as a "telecommunications outage". Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy the failure on outdated infrastructure. He said: "We old switches and old routers. We 1980s little copper lines." He added: "It's an old system that down. It went down everywhere. It got overloaded." Duffy warned that systems would " to break" unless Congress extra funds. He said: "I can't build things if I don't have money."