Washington (agencies)
The resumption of flights got off to a slow start in the US after the US Federal Aviation Administration scrambled to fix a technical fault in the system, which imposed a temporary 120-minute suspension on flights out of the country.
It’s unclear what caused the problem, which has led to thousands of US flight delays, but US officials said they have yet to find any evidence of a cyber-attack.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said on Twitter: “Normal air traffic is gradually resuming in the United States, following a malfunction in the Air Mission Notification system that provides safety information to flight crews, and the ban on trip has been cancelled, and we continue to investigate the cause of the initial problem.
According to the Flight Aware website, more than 5,400 flights have been delayed, 900 canceled and officials have said it will take hours for flights to return to normal.
“The Federal Aviation Administration previously ordered airlines to temporarily halt all domestic flights after the outage, which was resolved at 2 a.m. local time,” officials said.
The Administration should implement a ground delay program to address the backlog of ground flight hours. Flights already flying could continue to their destinations during the holiday period.
US President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Transportation to investigate the malfunction and said the cause was unknown at this time. In response to a question about whether a cyberattack was behind the malfunction, Biden told reporters at the White House, “We don’t know.”
White House spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre tweeted: “The Secretary of Transportation notified the President this morning of the failure of the FAA system. There is no evidence of a cyber attack at this point, but the President has requested that Department of Transportation conducts a full investigation into the causes and the FAA will provide an update.” information on a regular basis.
Shares of US airlines fell in early trading yesterday, before most of them rallied after opening the market to a positive area as flights recovered.
The enormity of the event was evident in the statements of some American officials and pilots, who pointed out the similarities between what is happening now and what happened on September 11, 2001.
“Travellers will feel a huge impact,” said Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
“The last time we stopped all planes was, and I hate to say it, 9/11… there are no planes in motion,” he told Fox News.
For its part, the Kanawha County Commission in West Virginia released a statement saying, “It is our judgment that we have not seen such a grounding of all aircraft since 9/11, and this matter is very important.”
The pilots also expressed concerns before resuming flights, according to a group of them, according to a Fox correspondent. “All US international flights will go nowhere and we have no indication of when that will change,” one said.
