Expert insight on flights paused across US

Now I want to bring in our aviation expert here, Josh Verde, to give us some insight into everything happening surrounding this ground stop. Josh, thank you for joining us. And I want to start from the very beginning here with this ground stop being issued until at least 10 p.m. Kind of give our viewers an understanding. Is this similar to a weather advisory or something where it could potentially be extended past that initial 10 p.m., depending on the information they're able to gather? Yeah, so it could be extended. Typically, a ground stop is used on an airport-by-airport basis. If there's some reason to stop departures heading to that airport, very commonly severe weather will be the reason. For a ground stop, the difference here is that the ground stop is as to all airports, so it's a nationwide ground stop, which is just a tremendous impact on commercial air travel. Now, notably, this is a little different than, for example, we were talking about during 9-11, the nationwide grounding of aircraft, that hasn't happened. So aircraft that are in the air currently are not being affected, and also what we call VFR aircraft, small planes, things like that, they're free to fly. Okay, so you mentioned those flights that are already in the air. We know we have thousands of flights in the air right now. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen said this was a telecommunications outage and as of right now, there's no indication as of yet that this may have been nefarious. So for those flights that are currently in the air right now, Let's talk about how do you ground those flights from a logistical standpoint? Because I would imagine fuel, for example, will also play a role in where those flights are able to land. So there's actually a procedure that all airline pilots, commercial pilots train for if there was lost communications. We don't really know at this moment the extent of this communications failure. I was tuning in earlier to some air traffic control communications. So I was able to hear that planes, for example, at Bush are communicating with ground control and the tower. So it's still working in most. Of the locations, but if there was a total failure of the radio communication system, there are alternate ways to get clearances and instructions to these planes. There's a system called ACARS which is basically text messaging in the air that they can use. And then we actually have a procedure if communications are lost to continue to the destination airport and land. So we would there's There are rules and procedures in place if that were to happen. But the best I can tell at this time, there's a communications outage, but it's not a blanket outage. These aircraft are still able to communicate with ATC. All right, Josh, I wanna follow up on some of that as well. When you're landing these flights though, where are you gonna put them? Is it possible you could see some airport locations across the country, maybe even reaching capacity and then having to find a different location for these aircrafts to land? So probably where that's going to happen is at the departure airport. Take for example, Bush. Obviously, this is the afternoon or evening bank of departures, you have a lot of flights departing internationally and just across the US. They're being held on the ground. So if they have not pushed back from their gate, they're gonna stay at their gate. Well, guess what? There are arriving flights that were scheduled to take that gate and they'll have nowhere to park. For the aircraft that have already pushed back and are waiting to take off. They're sitting out on the tarmac with either their engines running or their APU running so that we can have air conditioning on the plane, and they're burning fuel. And as they burn that fuel down, they will no longer be able to depart. So they'll have to return to the gate for more fuel. It will be a logistics nightmare for some time. If you're planning on traveling this weekend, it's very, very likely that your travel plans will be disrupted. And I'm glad you just mentioned that because we're looking at some video here of the ground. We have one of our photographers there and we are seeing some movement over at Hobby. This might actually be a plane returning to the gate. I'm not entirely sure. We have multiple crews there over at Hobby giving us a look at what's happening. But in terms of reestablishing that full communication between the air traffic control and those pilots. Thank you very much. Are you going to be, are they going to be testing those communications before they return to full flight, like a full flight schedule? Or is this just like, okay, we fix it, we go back? Or do you suspect there'll be some delay in regards to getting everything back up and running just because they want to test it first? You know, I think we're all a little traumatized from yesterday's Outlook outage, you know, something that happened on a large scale that affected everyone. I think they're going to need to test it. They're going to need to see whatever remedial measures they put in place or repair they put in place to make sure that everything's working. Otherwise, we just end up. Right back where we started with another potential ground stop. So because of that, I don't think the FAA has quite yet given us a definite time that everything will be restored, just an update time. And by the way, that's common with ground stops. They'll give a time that they expect to have more information. And the more information could be either an extension of the ground stop or lifting it altogether. So we can just hope for the best here. So far, no indication that safety of flight was impacted, but I think that's what. That's what the FAA is doing really is just sort of limiting those departures so that the risk is lower given the communications outage. And the first thing came into my mind when I first saw this nationwide ground stop, I started to think about Europe. Just last week, last week and a half or so, Europe had to ground several flights because there were bomb threats coming into several different countries, impacting their air travel as well. Do you think overall just the aviation industry may be on high alert just based on the current climate of things right now? As you mentioned too, Microsoft yesterday as well. I think this is what we're faced with, our systems, our aviation systems, our air traffic control systems for many, many years, decades. In fact, we're very hardwired systems, very, very kind of robust infrastructure. As we modernize those systems, as we make them more software driven instead of hardware driven. We're being faced with new sets of challenges, and certainly the rise of AI, I mean, I'm pretty sure somewhere along the chain here in programming, AI is implicated. Yeah. We're going to be faced with new challenges, and yeah, we're going to have to decide how much do we want to automate these systems? How much do we want to move from a hardware-based system into a software-based system? Because these kinds of things could happen, this is hopefully an opportunity for the FAA to take a look at their modernization and see if we're on the right track. Yeah, finally here tonight, even if things are I guess under control here by 10 PM, this can last into the weekend, right, just figuring out how to reschedule all those flights and get everyone to their destinations, this is going to be a headache. I think that's a safe assumption. Aviation, commercial aviation, it all runs so well until it doesn't. And then these disruptions, they tend to persist until the system can kind of get back online. So if you're traveling this weekend, if you have air travel plans this weekend, I could just say expect delays. Yeah, all right, Josh, thank you so much. I know for me as a reporter hearing you talk about the various levels of communication that are in place to make sure we can still communicate with those aircrafts in the air. That was certainly reassuring here today. Josh, thank you for your time, perspective and expertise. My pleasure.