On Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop due to Air Traffic Control communication issues.
The FAA ordered all US airports to ground stop. No flights could depart, and flights already in the air were allowed to land.
Additional details about the “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding the technical issues are unclear.
DHS Chief Markwayne Mullin said there was a ‘telecommunications outage throughout the FAA.’
“There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack,” Mullin said as he assured that every flight has been accounted for.
The ground stop was lifted hours later, but roughly 1.5 million travelers remain stranded at airports across the country.
Per FlightAware, over 4,000 flights have been canceled so far, while thousands more have been delayed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to provide a briefing on flight operations at 10:30 am ET on Saturday.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Duffy is requesting $50 billion in emergency funding from Congress to fix the U.S. air traffic control (ATC) and airspace systems.
“What went down was old, right? It was the old legacy equipment. It failed,” Duffy said during a Friday night press conference. “And listen, it’s going to continue to fail.”
Watch live:
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