Thousands of flights the USA were grounded Friday the 13th following a major communications failure the country's air traffic control system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop problems radar and communications equipment. More than 3,500 airplanes were the air the time. Thousands of flights were cancelled, leaving passengers stranded airports nationwide. The problem was eventually traced to an overloaded router, possibly as a result maintenance work to replace decades-old copper wires fibre-optic cables. The FAA lifted the ground stop almost five hours later. Operations may take days to return to normal.
The incident sparked widespread concern. Officials quickly reassured the public that it was not another 9/11. The US homeland security secretary said there had been no indication a cyberattack or national security threat. He described the incident as a "telecommunications outage". Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the failure outdated infrastructure. He said: "We have old switches and old routers. We use 1980s little copper lines." He added: "It's an old system that went down. It went down everywhere. It got overloaded." Duffy warned that systems would "continue to break" unless Congress allocated extra funds. He said: "I can't build things if I don't have money."
