U.S. Flights Resume, but Disruptions Continue... “Back to Normal on the 15th”

[Financial News]

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted its takeoff ban, but flight operations remain disrupted. The FAA expects operations to return to normal on the 15th (local time).
The FAA had banned aircraft from taking off nationwide on the 13th (local time) because of a communications problem. The measure, the second and longest takeoff ban since the September 11 attacks in 2001, was lifted after four hours, but disruptions to flight operations continue.
Citing data from aviation analytics firm Cirium, CNBC reported that the takeoff ban affected plans for 11,000 flights. The number of passengers affected reached 1.5 million. Six hundred flights were diverted.
International flights resumed taking off before 6 p.m. Eastern Time.
At a briefing on the 14th, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said an update to a communications system managed by defense contractor L3Harris had caused the problem.
Earlier, at a press conference on the evening of the 13th, Duffy said a surge of data on a router had made the transmission of information to air traffic control centers unstable, prompting the FAA to impose the takeoff ban.
He said outdated U.S. infrastructure was to blame and argued that Congress needed to approve additional funding to improve the U.S. air traffic control system. According to CNBC, airline executives have been frustrated for years by outdated equipment and a shortage of air traffic control centers.
The FAA dismissed speculation that the problem was caused by its recent nationwide expansion of SMART, an artificial intelligence (AI) air traffic control system.
At a press conference, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said there was “absolutely no evidence” that the problem had been triggered by a crime or anything related to AI.
Bedford said no equipment had gone offline, explaining that the FAA had decided to impose the takeoff ban because real-time information transmission was “unstable.”
Although the takeoff ban was lifted, flight disruptions continued on the 14th.
According to flight-tracking site FlightAware, as of 9:40 a.m. Eastern Time, about 3,700 domestic flights had been canceled and nearly 2,000 delayed. Disruptions continued after about 9,000 flights were canceled and about 7,000 delayed the previous day.
Meanwhile, Bedford said flight operations could be fully back to normal on the 15th.
He said he believed the worst was over, but that a considerable recovery effort was still needed.

[email protected] Song Kyung-jae Reporter