The United States civil aviation agency, the FAA, ended at around 10:20 pm, Brasília time, the suspension of flights across the country that had been in effect since early Friday night (13). The measure was taken after a communication failure, according to Donald Trump administration officials.
For now, there is no evidence that the outage was caused by a cyber attack or any similar threat, according to the government. The suspension, which lasted more than four hours, affected at least 10,000 flights, according to specialized websites, and millions of passengers.
"The population has never been in danger," said Markwayne Mullin, US Secretary of Homeland Security, at a press conference after the suspension ended. "No lives and no flights were at risk, the FAA handled the issue, and the suspension was due to overzealousness. All your loved ones are safe."
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the cause of the failure was a failure in old equipment in the air traffic control system. According to him, the instability began at 3:36 pm (Washington time), when controllers began to receive inconsistent information from radars and faced communication problems with aircraft.
The secretary took advantage of the press conference to pressure Congress to release new resources to modernize the system. “We have an incredibly old air traffic control system,” he said. He said that, although US$15 billion has been allocated to the FAA over the last 25 years for improvements, few advances have been made, and defended the release of US$50 billion for the modernization of air infrastructure.
"This is an emergency. I want Congress to give us emergency funding. This is bipartisan. This is American," he declared. Duffy also criticized the condition of the control towers, some of which are almost a hundred years old, and mentioned problems such as leaks, broken elevators and faulty air conditioning systems.
Duffy announced that American airspace reopened at 8:15 pm, after control systems normalized. He highlighted, however, that the resumption of operations will be gradual and will depend on the availability of pilots and flight attendants.
"It will take some time to undo what happened this afternoon," he said. According to him, airlines will try to carry out as many flights as possible this Friday, while part of operations should resume on Saturday morning (14). The secretary said he expected a significant improvement in aircraft circulation over the weekend.
The last time the US ordered a national suspension of takeoffs was in January 2023, when the pilot notification system failed. At the time, the suspension lasted just under two hours, despite the system problem having lasted 12 hours. Previously, the measure had been adopted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, remaining in force for two days.
At the time, flights that were already in the air were ordered to return to their points of origin or, when this was not possible due to fuel limitations, to land at Canadian airports. During this Friday's suspension, the few continued to happen normally.
Mullin said some communications systems were overloaded. Before the end of the suspension, he had said: "I want to reinforce this once again: there is no reason for people to be afraid or worried about their loved ones. This is not another 9/11," he said. "This is a telecommunications failure. It's a very different situation."
According to the Bloomberg agency, the FBI, the American federal police, does not believe that the failure was caused by a cyber attack or criminal activity. Microsoft also issued a statement stating that the crisis is not related to the global systems crash that affected its technologies.
Eurocontrol, the intergovernmental organization responsible for coordinating and managing air traffic in 42 European and neighboring countries, suspended flights to the USA, in response to the FAA's request.
The failure occurred about two weeks before Thanksgiving, on November 26, one of the busiest periods at American airports. According to Airlines for America, US companies are expected to transport, on average, around 2.7 million passengers per day during the holiday.
The suspension is expected to have repercussions for several days at airports around the world. This is because flight delays and cancellations impact subsequent flights, in a cascading effect.
Although aircraft can continue flying in airspace without air traffic control under visual flight rules, most planes must be diverted, prevented from taking off or grounded. Controllers use radio frequencies to communicate with pilots and paper logs or electronic systems to monitor aircraft movements.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the FAA's aging communications system. This Friday, the agency and the White House asked the Legislature for an additional $30.1 billion to solve other problems.
