FAA OUTAGE DISRUPTS MORE THAN 1.5 MILLION PASSENGERS AS U.S. FLIGHT BACKLOG SPREADS
More than 1.5 million passengers faced potential disruption after a telecommunications failure affecting all 22 U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers prompted the FAA to impose a nationwide ground stop on Friday, November 13. About 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart U.S. airports after 4 p.m. Eastern, according to aviation analytics company Cirium. The FAA reopened U.S. airspace at 8:15 p.m. Eastern, but thousands of cancellations, delays and diversions left airlines with a major backlog of displaced aircraft, crews and passengers. Officials said there was no evidence of a cyberattack and linked the disruption to overloaded equipment within the FAA’s aging telecommunications network, although the precise cause of the overload remains under investigation.