Flight delays continue after nationwide FAA ground stop lifted

Breaking off the top at 10 here on Fox Local. Nationwide ground stop lifted. Airplanes taking off again tonight after a rare move by the FAA shutting down U.S. airspace and stopping flights for nearly five hours. Late tonight, the Trump administration said there was a major system failure impacting all 22 regional air traffic control centers around 3:30 this afternoon. This has not happened since January of 2023. The ground stop we know diverted more than 800 flights and delayed or canceled thousands more. A massive amount of passengers have been stranded at airports all across the country. The nation's top homeland security official says there is no indication of a cyber attack, while transportation leaders are pointing to overloaded, outdated systems. I think the question for the American people is, do you want your Congress to fund this? President Trump has asked for the money. He's asked the Congress on a bipartisan approach to say, give us the resources to build a state-of-the-art air traffic control system. Let's not do a patchwork, a fix to a system that's critical for every single family. It's not red, it's not blue, it's not Democrat, it's not Republican. It's American. Give us the money to fix it. The ground stop has since been lifted, but now comes the ripple effect. Flights have not resumed at all airports across the country. And the transportation secretary warned tonight it is going to take some real time to get air traffic back to normal. We have live team coverage tonight at airports across the D.C. region. Fox 5's Josh Rosenthal is standing by at Dulles International Airport. But we start with our Shamari Stone live at Reagan National tonight. Shamari. Well, first of all, after we were anchoring doing the 4 p.m. show, we immediately came here and it has been, I must say, exhausting because you come here and there are so many people, many of them upset, some understanding like, hey, this is it is what it is, whereas others are just waiting, trying to figure out what happened. They are relieved that the it's been lifted. However, they now have major delays. We're talking about flight cancellations, folks not knowing if they're going to make it. Take a look at this board right here, you guys. Cancel, delayed, delayed, canceled, canceled, and these delays, I was told, are actually kind of irrelevant because some of these flights have been canceled. You come over here, you see the same thing. Let's take a quick little walk together. This is Norma, and Norma took off from Georgia this morning, right? She was going to fly to New York. Well, due to some weather incident down in Georgia, she was diverted here to DCA, but she's stuck. So now, she was trying to get to New York, and now you've been here. How are you feeling? How are you feeling tonight? Quite exhausted. It's been a lot to have to deal with, but we're trying to get through it as best we can. So what are you doing now? You're supposed to get to New York and now you're just stuck here at DCA. Yes, well now we're going to have to, the flights were canceled obviously, so now we're going to see where we can find a hotel to stay because they finally rescheduled our flight but not until tomorrow. Not until tomorrow. Well, I hope you make it to the Big Apple. I understand you have some shows you're going to go see with your daughter. I do, yes. All right, make sure you take a selfie and put it on Instagram and Fox Local, and we'll check it out. Take a quick walk with me real quick, you guys. This is John. Now, you saw John on a live shot we did earlier this evening. You're still here. It has been a long process. How many hours are we talking about, John? Five hours for me. Five hours just sitting here. What are you going to do next? Your flight was canceled. I'm going to rebook my flight for tomorrow, and I'm going to be heading home this evening. As soon as my daughter comes up this escalator, I'll be out of here. What's your reaction? How are you going to remember today? As a long, drawn-out... It's just been a draining event. I mean, have you eaten anything? Are you hungry? Well, I got some cookies that I got from living, so I'm going to share them with you today. Now, you know, I've lost a lot of weight, and I've kept it off for three years. I don't know if I can have cookies, but I have a little piece, all right? There you go. All right, John. You can see John, he has his cookies. Yeah, it's a sweet cookie, but this is a bitter experience for him. Now, just to let you all know, right down there, there are people lined up trying to to talk to their airlines to see what they can do to rebuild. rebook their flights, many of them heard Transportation Secretary Duffy speaking and they're thinking to themselves how did this happen, why did this happen, and they want to see what can be done to make sure it doesn't happen again, don't know if that's possible, but that's what I'm hearing from the travelers here at DCA who tell me that they will never forget today. Back to you in the studio, Sydney and Kenneth. I'm sure that is true. Shamari, thank you. Our team coverage continues now. Fox 5's Josh Rosenthal is live at Dulles International Airport with the very latest from passengers there. Josh. Yeah, Sydney, Shamari was over at DCA. We're seeing a little bit of a different scene here at Dulles. We'll start over here on this big board, as you can see up here. Yep, we got a lot of canceled flights. We're seeing a lot of delayed flights as well. But then, as you work your way down, increasingly, we are seeing more and more on-time flights. That includes this flight, you can see right here, heading to Seoul. And let's talk to Dong Hui, who is about to board and head on over to Seoul. So, Dong Hui, fellow reporter, he... He is heading to Seoul, but from there he will be heading to the APEC summit, right, to see President Trump. And you were telling me, you were sitting at home, you were seeing all this news come in. You didn't think you were making it out there, did you? Yeah, I was very concerned about the situation. I'm afraid of missing the flights because the APEC meeting, President Donald Trump's visit to China will be very important for us. So I was so concerned about that. Fortunately, it was covered very quickly. President Trump, in and out for a lot of these meetings, as many world leaders are. So you missed that first flight. You might not get your chance. What was your reaction when you heard the ground stop was over and you might actually get out of here tonight? So I'm so happy because at home, I actually watched the news briefing in the White House. I heard Secretary Duffy talking about the... The situation of the infrastructure, particularly today's incident, is a kind of urgency. So I agree with him about the updating the infrastructure in the United States. I think it's very important as a big power. We should have a... Better infrastructure Let me ask you one more question, Donahue. You watched that briefing. We watched the briefing as well. We aired it on the Fox Local app. A lot of questions about safety. Should people feel safe getting on these flights after this happened? How are you feeling about to board your flight? At the very beginning, I feel a little bit nervous. I just think, oh, is it a hijack or is it a terrorist attack? But after hearing the briefing by the Secretary of Homeland Security, I feel safe, yeah. Donahue, good job, man. Thank you so much. Safe travels. I hope you get some face time with President Trump. Thank you very much. Guys, follow me this way. I'll give you a little bit more of a spin around Dulles here. You know, I heard Shamari talking about all these people who had missed their flights. A little bit of a different deal here. This is the departure section. It's been pretty quiet. Since we've been here, we've also been downstairs to the arrival section. That's pretty quiet, too. Over here, you can see people in line. I've been coming over and talking to them. And at first, I said, oh, my gosh, are you guys trying to rebook your flights now that the ground stop is over? Everybody I've talked to over in this area said, no, no, no, we're just showing up. Our flights are on time. Things look okay. And that seems to be the case here, especially with all these international flights that we know come in and out of Dulles quite a bit. One more story I will leave you with. Down here in baggage claim, this might be where we do our next live shot at 10:30 down there. But we are down there checking things out, and anybody who's been here will know that this airport, just like every other airport, they have volunteers that come in here at Dulles. They wear those blue vests, and I was talking to one of the volunteers. He told me that he just periodically volunteers here. He does not get paid. He said he was sitting on his couch, and at about 5:30, he saw an email that had come in saying, we've got a little bit of a situation. Can any of you volunteers? Please just come on out to the airport. He said, well, I don't have anything better to do. So he came on out. He's still here tonight. He said that starting at about 6 o'clock, he lives close. He said it was all unhappy people he was dealing with, a whole lot of them down at his desk there. He said since 9 o'clock. It's been almost entirely happy people, or maybe the better phrase would be relieved people. And, guys, that is what we are hearing a lot of, Dong Hui included, tonight. For now, back to you. Yeah, so many people impacted, all hands on deck here as well, dealing with this major disruption and a number of security concerns today. Because of this incident, the DHS secretary said tonight at the White House, the public was never in any danger. There's no indication of a cyber attack or malicious behavior, but that investigation continues. Joining us now live is cyber security expert at the National Security Institute, Anne-Marie Zettelmoyer. Ma'am, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So you heard Kenneth say there, administration officials say this does not appear to be a cyber security issue, it does not appear to be a cyber attack. As an expert in this space, how confident are you in that initial assessment, based on the information that's available right now? Frankly, I don't think there's been an indicator that that would be the case. We just don't know yet. I think that it's prudent to continue to investigate the root cause. But really, the question here is, how did we let a technology... A failure or how did the technology failure become a nationwide ground stop or a nationwide issue in the first place? But as far as a cyber attack goes, we don't know yet. And we still need to investigate again. Yeah. No indications of a cyber attack under investigation. But you heard Secretary Sean Duffy also say that they don't believe that this was because of the AI rollout for the AI system they were using, because essentially. They're not connected. It's something that helps air traffic controllers. So when you come to, but when we do get that AI system up and running, is it possible, because that's one of the concerns, is that hackers would somehow get a hold of this AI and have an impact on air traffic control? Well, I think it's easy for folks to wonder that since there's been a lot in the news about AI going rogue and having attacks on different things that are not intended. But in this case, the smart system that has been rolled out by the FAA is there for coordination. It is not the communications infrastructure or backbone that was affected in this case. So the two do not appear to be connected at all at this point. Even if this is not related to a cybersecurity issue, if this is just outdated technology as the administration has said they believe it to be, does having outdated technology like this in our air traffic control system throughout the FAA, if it is as dire as they suggest it is as far as how outdated it is, does that open us up to a cybersecurity vulnerability potentially? Oh, absolutely. We have aging critical infrastructure throughout our services, utilities, financial, aviation, all of it. Everything needs to be hardened, you know, but our critical infrastructure depends highly on very interconnected technology and aging technology and adversaries understand those dependencies. So investment in hardening and investment in resilience and how to mitigate the threats that we have now, let alone upgrade systems for future resiliency is absolutely needed. Yes. Well, Anne-Marie, we appreciate you taking the time here on Fox 5 tonight to break all of that down for us. Obviously, a lot of questions folks have. We appreciate your insight. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And our ground stop coverage does continue again as that ground stop is lifted as you take a live look at Reagan National Airport from our Fox 5 Skycam. But we still want to get you your weather forecast on this Friday night. Yes, we do. We are going to turn now to your forecast. Mike Thomas is in. What can you tell us, Mike? It's a chilly day. Yeah, chilly day, and we're ahead of a chilly weekend. In fact, first day this month where this number has been in the negative, 7 degrees. Below the seasonal average here in D.C. Low temp 46, high temp just after 1 o'clock this afternoon at 52. We spent most of the day today in the 40s here in Washington. And there you go. We had one day at average back on the 2nd, but every other day this month has featured above normal temperatures until today at 7 degrees below the seasonal average. Reagan National, which I'm sure will be busy all night, as planes are going to play that catch-up game for most of the evening hours now that skies are open again. Again, 44 degrees. Reagan National Airport, Dulles at 41, BWI Thurgood Marshall, 41 as well. clouds and we'll get used to this thing through the weekend here and there and you know we'll have cloud cover for a few hours some sun will break out and then more clouds move in it's that type of weekend here in Washington reason why is actually that storm that brought us some rain showers yesterday and some snow I'll show you how much snow later in the show up across interior portions of the northeast but it's still hanging out off the coast though it doesn't look too active on radar right now what matters more is your wind direction which is which is coming right off those Great Lakes, and that'll send D.C. occasional cloud cover in our mountains. Mountains to the west, occasional rain and even snow showers across some of the highest elevations out that way. Could get a few inches of snow there. Here in Washington, as we work our way through the weekend tomorrow, expect temperatures to, you know, again, in and out of the sunshine and a cooler feel, much like today. High temperatures only expected to be in the lower 50s here in Washington, most of the day in the 40s, and with the wind chill factored in, just about all day feeling. Like it'll be in the 40s here in Washington. So as we take you through your upcoming weekend here, Saturday's temperature, 52 degrees. Expect breezes to remain, well, rather consistent as we work our way through the course of the afternoon hours. And as we work our way into Sunday, we'll finally see those breezes starting to wind down just a little bit. So that'll allow temperatures to bubble up to about 55 degrees in the afternoon. But we'll see improvement in that department. Tonight, sun went down 4:56. Tomorrow, 455. Next week, 450. Four forty seven as we get towards that Saturday, just after Thanksgiving, your earliest sunset of the year, less than a month away now, four forty five p.m. And we'll actually start adding daylight on the sunset side of things prior to the winter solstice next week. A little bit of a warm up in store. We will talk more about it coming up in just a little bit. Stay tuned. We have much more on that big time FAA shutdown today or the airspace shutdown coming up after this short break.