Ground stop lifted after hourslong halt to US departures snarls air travel nationwide
By Dalia Faheid, Kit Maher
Domestic US flights are being allowed to depart again after federal officials issued an hourslong ground stop due to safety concerns from a telecommunications outage. The issue stemmed from a problem with network routers that cascaded nationwide, an airline source said.
An estimated 1.5 million people were stranded by flight cancellations, according to analysis by the data firm Cirium. The skies emptied as flights that were already in the air came in for landing and the ground stop dragged on for more than four hours.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the ground stop did not stem from a threat to the US and was not linked to this week’s disruptive Microsoft outage. Preliminary reports indicate this was not a cyberattack, law enforcement sources told CNN.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stressed that the public was not in danger throughout tonight’s nationwide ground stop, telling reporters at the White House that it was initiated out of an “abundance of caution.”
“I just want to reiterate this: the public was never at danger through this process,” Mullin said. “There was there was never any lives at risk. There was no flights at risk. FAA was able to handle it. We did it out of an abundance of caution.”
Mullin also said no link exists between tonight’s events and Thursday’s Microsoft outage.
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