FAA national ground stop: What we know so far

Planes are, in fact, still landing. One of the problems, though, reported is O'Hare Airport in Chicago, possibly at capacity for landing. So I have a feeling we're going to start seeing that around the country. There's only so many places where you can put these planes. So the trickle-down effect, as we talk about with any kind of airport issues, it can last days and days and days, which is really unfortunate for travelers and still looking for answers. Well, usually Mother Nature has a hand in the chaos. That's right. And so we talk a little bit about people who are stranded. And when you have four or five Four or five hours of worth of travelers that are stranded, that then builds a backlog and it affects everyone. Even if you're not O'Hare, O'Hare, of course, the busiest airport in the country. And so clearly, this is a situation where you're gonna be watching to see how the after effect happens. But there's a bigger question and one that you've been talking to Debbie Dingell and we've been talking to lawmakers about what it is that happened here. Because that's gonna be the big question is, how is it? That, as you heard Brent Yacc say, there wasn't a redundancy in this, and so obviously that's an issue to not have a backup with the system. And we're gonna go to Dave Kenshin again. He's at McNamara Terminal at DTW. And before your earpiece gave out, Dave, I wanted to ask you, are people going to the Delta counter asking questions? Are you overhearing any of those conversations at all? What are the airlines folks saying? Nothing. They're just waiting, pretty much. I mean, people are just kind of waiting on their phones. We can give you a live look over there. It's people trying to figure out what's going on, but kind of going up to the desk, and the desk agents are telling them the same thing, that they're really not sure what to tell them, you know, that the airlines will update them as soon as they get word from the federal government on all of this. There's more red here. I do want to see, there's way more cancellations that have been popping up, though. That's one new thing that we have seen. We talked about LaGuardia and these cancellations going into New York. That's a new one. We haven't seen that one yet, so that's new. We've got... We're seeing more planes, flights that are boarding, but obviously not going anywhere. So people are going to begin to sit for a while. That process will be just beginning for some folks out here. So let me try to talk to some more folks here. How are you doing, ma'am? Can you tell me where you're headed and what your airline is telling you, if anything? I'm headed to LGA, and they just said it was like a... F-C-C cancellation. F-A-A-A-A. F-A-A-A-A cancellation, so right now they're either canceling flights or rebooking, and most aren't leaving until tomorrow. Okay, so, I mean, how do you feel about this whole thing? A national ground stop, you know, this is a rare thing that happens, but all planes, all flights grounded pretty much in the continental U.S. What goes through your mind? I hope that everything is okay, first and foremost, Thank you so much. You know, it sucks if you have to get to work or you were visiting family and everything. But, you know, everything happens for a reason. And I just hope that, you know, everything is okay and everything will be okay. All right. Yeah, we're good. Thanks for so much. We hope this gets all straightened up for you and everybody else soon. Appreciate you talking to us. We're going to talk to some more folks here. Thank you very much. Not that guy because I know him from another TV station. So we won't talk to him. Hi, though. Let's try this person over here. How you doing? Hi, how are you? Good, thanks. Good. We're live on Fox 2. I just want to get your thoughts on what's happening. Where are you headed? Where are you trying to get to? And what's your take on all of this? Yeah, I had a friend's bachelorette. I was actually inside. I have left. And we got a notice, like, we're going to be delayed. And then I was checking on X, and people were saying, oh, this is shut down. And it wasn't until, you know, 15, 20 minutes after we got the report inside that there was the delay that we found out it was the FAA ground stop. So pretty eerie, weird in there. And I think people are just trying to figure out if they should leave tonight. What's the delay? How's it all going to play out? When you say in there, in the gate? Yeah, in the gate. I was at my gate. Yeah. And just tell me more about the vibe at the gate with everybody just looking at their phones, talking. Yeah, everyone's looking at their phones. Everyone's trying to, people are talking to one another, trying to figure out if anything's connected to this Microsoft Outlook thing that happened yesterday. So people are all over the place. It's a bit stressful, but I just decided it's for the best. I've got to leave tonight. And still trying to wait for some kind of update from your airline, right? I have not heard anything, no. Gotcha. All right. Thanks for talking to us. We really appreciate it. Yep. So I think we're just gonna go back to the board here because again, this is really the kind of key indicator of everything. I'll give you a quick shot though. You can see obviously not many people going through the security line right now because there's nowhere to really go. There's no flights obviously taking off. So this is a really kind of eerie to see this, you know. By the way, I don't know if this is a new display here showing the Washington-Delaware crossing, but it has a lot of safety updates typically. That's kind of a new thing since I've been here last, but you can see. The TSA folks, they're standing by. They're trying to figure out what's going on. It's a very strange thing. A Friday before the weekend and really nothing happening as far as people going, obviously, to the gates because of the ground stop. Going to just work this screen a little bit more. I'm seeing more cancellations. Jordan, if you want to come over here. We're talking Birmingham, Alabama right now. Canceled. This is a KLM flight, just a flash to Korean Airlines. But, well, yeah. You get the idea. Air France, so all of these canceled here. We're seeing, we saw Wisconsin earlier, Alpena, Buffalo, New York is a newer one that's canceled now. So, and we're seeing times, what time is it now? It's, well, we're... We're pushing the hour here and we're starting to see these delays going up and then eventually reaching the canceled status right now. This one, another flight to Birmingham, Alabama, pushed back to 9:18. We got 548 right now, so you're only going to see more of that. We talked about Green Bay, Wisconsin. We talked about Greensboro, Arkansas, LA. We didn't talk about this. Los Angeles, one flight here, DLA-52 at the gate, but certainly not going anywhere. This one here. WestJet, 82, 97, delayed to 10, or actually, this keeps changing, folks. This gives you an idea of how fast everything's changing. Cancellations, times push back. Omaha, Nebraska canceled a WestJet flight. We talked about New York, LaGuardia as well, Milwaukee, and Milwaukee. Syracuse, New York, this is a new cancellation we've seen. I mean, okay. This was scheduled for 2:25, so it clearly pushed back. Syracuse, Traverse City, we talked about, canceled. So we're going to start seeing a lot more. We've seen more red since all of this started. We're, what, maybe about two hours? Are we about two hours into this right now? Close to that. So this is, we talked about Montreal, Trudeau. Also, Cancel here. Minneapolis-St. Paul, this flight pushed back to 9:53. Miami-Florida pushed back to 7 o'clock, so about a little over an hour out, but we're going to see that probably getting canceled as well. So, folks, if you're watching Fox 2, we're giving you a live update right now. We're going to show you. This is probably the thing. Okay, real quick, I want to show you we've got a fresh batch of people going through security checkpoint because some flights are boarding, as we saw, but clearly not taking off, and you can kind of see the looks on their faces. Hey, we're going to get as close as we can to. the gates but that's pretty much about as they're taking it as they go they'll get to the gate they'll see where they go from there let me try to talk to these folks over here how you guys doing how are you what's your name sir as you come this way what's your what's your name Oh Hoshi and what do you think about this ground stuff what's going through your mind How do you feel about all this? So we just got here and we're actually not sure that we're gonna make it, because when I go back to Dallas, I have a math competition there, so I'm like a little stressed. And your airline probably not telling you a whole lot right now, right? Yeah. Have you ever seen these many delayed and canceled flights? We've got a national ground stop. We had a little bit of this about three years ago, but this is certainly not something that happens often at all. Yeah, terrible. We saw this in Boston a few months back because of the weather, but this is the first time for it nationwide. Gotcha. All right. All right. Well, thank you guys for talking to us. Really appreciate it. I want to give you guys just one more look because, again, now, and this will switch back, but this is the first time I've seen all red except for one. Not yet, but it's going to switch. So right here. London Heathrow at the gate, 7.15 departure, but we may see that push, but this is the first time when it switches back, all red except for one, pretty much, right? So we're going to see a lot more of that. We're seeing that over here. Look at this. All red as it switches back, except for, I think, two in this case. Once it switches back, there we go. So canceled Omaha. Thank you very much. All red. Yeah, no one moving anytime soon. So that's kind of what's happening here. We'll send it right back to you guys unless you have a question or two. All right. Dave Kinch, reporting live tonight. Dave, keep those live pictures up if you could for us because we want to continue to talk with some experts we have on the phone. But just if you're just joining us right now, there's a ground stop order for all airports across the nation for reasons of safety is what they're saying. Although Mark Wayne Mullen, the head of Homeland Security, Jessica, making it clear in a news conference saying There's no indication at this point of anything nefarious, but certainly a failure. And Brent Yaks, a cyber risk expert we talk to all the time, joins us live on the phone. And Brent, I want to start by talking about, just for a little background, the FAA expanded its new AI air traffic control system, kind of in preparation for Thanksgiving travel. That was done, that update at 22 different air traffic control systems around the country was done just three days ago. Brent, what do you make of that? Then three days later, we have this situation going on. Yeah, I definitely think from an optics standpoint, it's not a great look for them. The smart system, this is what they call it, their new AI system. And really, it's a way for them to control the routes of different planes between different locations or different regional locations. So it's supposed to enhance the ability for planes to get to different locations. So in February 10th, the FAA came out and said, hey, we're going to expand the smart system out to 22 regional airports and locations, Expand the usage. of it, just to get the system out there. And then, of course, now we're three days later and we're contemplating, hey, did that have anything to do with this huge communication issue? But what I do know is that. It doesn't seemingly look like they're related. The AI system was for planning routing where we're talking right now about a big communications issue. And we don't think that they're related, but you know when you upgrade a system, especially an antiquated system, sometimes like if you replace a part in your car, the new part causes the old parts to break. So do we, if they're related, we're not sure yet. Talk for a moment about what we do know at this hour for those who are just joining us and trying to get some perspective here. As a cyber risk expert, As for someone who obviously knows... About how these things work. Get into that ATC, the air traffic control, that computerized system. How old is it? What is it that could have gone wrong to cause this big outage? Yeah, so we do know the FAA does have a number of systems, air traffic controllers have a number of systems that are pretty antiquated. We just heard that by 2030, I think they want to, or 2028, somewhere in that neighborhood, they want to get rid of the last floppy disk, which I don't think I've seen on a computer in, you know, a decade. So we do know they have old systems. Are they a part of the communication network? You know, we're still waiting to hear because there hasn't been at least anything to come out saying what had caused this issue. But if you back up for a second and look at, you know, these communication systems are just computers, right? And we've heard in Michigan here that, you know, the water systems were being attacked or municipalities, right? So we do know that these large-scale systems like this sometimes are very big targets for some type of cyber activity. Now, you had mentioned Mark Wayne Mullen, who just announced recently that they have not. pinpointed any cyber attack. They do not feel at this point they have enough information to say there was any type of cyber attack. But I mean, if you are somebody who's nefarious out there, if you are a nation state, if you are a country that obviously has some political issues with the US, this could really be a target that you might want to go after to completely disrupt the US, make sure that the planes couldn't take off. So it does seem like a very appropriate target. But again, we haven't seen any information that is alluding to that yet. We don't know enough about the cause, but again, it is an obvious target. And Brent, a quick question for you. From our folks on the ground at DTW, they're saying people are remaining calm. The messaging from federal officials in Washington is that this is not another 9-11, also to remain calm. But from a tech perspective, how unusual is this? Just give us some context, give us from that side of things, of how rare this is. Yeah. So, you know, I heard you mentioned earlier about 9-11. Of course, that was the last major one that was caused from something different, though, right? There wasn't actually a technology failure for 9-11. That was, of course, a horrific attack against the US. But that was why those were down then. The only other time within recent years that we've seen something similar to this was in 2023 when we had another ground stop because of a software issue, a technology issue. So really, if you think about it over the last 20 years, we've seen something this large. Only a couple times, maybe three, 2023. It was only a small portion that got shut down in the northeast, I think. But we really rarely ever see something of this magnitude effect. And I know it's pretty niche, Brent, but back in 2023 you were referencing the NOTAM system, which is also the communication system between all the elements that make the airlines go. Where does that, and I don't know how much you know about the 2023, but where does that How does that compare to possibly this telecommunication issue? Right. So, and we've seen, you know, a similar excuse, like what it was, and I don't mean to use the word excuse, but something at this scale in a backup system doesn't come into play and it doesn't take over and it doesn't establish communication between the different regional airports. You know, anything to why that went down is in my technical opinion, because I do this for a living and excuse, you really need redundant systems. So the fact that we saw that and it was communications and it was something similar out of 2023, maybe not the exact same Not the exact same root of the problem or the systems, but still enough where it disrupted communications where they had to put airplanes down. That's concerning, and this is just reminiscent of that again, and it really is something that we need to investigate much more. Thank you. Please stay with us through the night, and we'll be calling you again. We appreciate your time today. Brent Yaks, and if you're just joining us, 10,000 flights, affected by this ground stoppage that's happened BECAUSE OF A TECHNICAL ISSUE WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, SOMETHING THAT WE'RE WATCHING VERY CAREFULLY AT THIS HOUR. AND WE WILL CONTINUE TO FOLLOW. We have crews at DTW right now. We'll check in with them at the top of the show.