A faulty file was the cause of the flight chaos in the US on Wednesday, according to the US Air Traffic Control Authority (FAA). So far, there are no indications of a cyber attack, the company said.
Due to a computer malfunction, planes were not allowed to take off on domestic routes for about 90 minutes on Wednesday morning. In total, more than 10,000 flights were delayed in the US and more than 1,300 were canceled entirely.
It was the first such nationwide grounding since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. One of them acted out of particular caution, US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said in view of the take-off ban.
Republicans furious over flight chaos
Criticism poured in, especially from the Republican camp. The FAA’s inability to keep a vital safety system operational is unacceptable and the most recent example of incompetence within the Department of Transportation, Republican Senator Ted Cruz tweeted.
In the face of supply chain issues and continued flight cancellations, Buttigieg was overwhelmed by the position of Secretary of Transportation, Republican MP Andy Biggs criticized on Twitter.
In a statement, Senate Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, Democrat, wrote that an investigation would be launched into the cause of the outage. “The public needs a resilient transportation system,” Cantwell said.
Starting ban on Wednesday morning
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also announced that it is further investigating how exactly the incident could have happened. All necessary measures are taken to ensure that such a failure does not occur again.
On Tuesday evening (local time), a computer error broke down a system that provides pilots with safety-related information about upcoming flights. The FAA issued a ground ban on Wednesday morning. The ban was lifted after the FAA said it had fixed the outage.
Air traffic was back to normal Thursday morning and there were no unusual disruptions, according to the FAA. By 11 a.m. local time in Washington, more than 1,000 flights had been delayed and about 100 canceled, according to flightaware.com. According to the FAA, an average of about 45,000 flights take place in US airspace each day. (SDA)