The 'deeply woeful' condition of America's airspace system

What a desperate time and place for this to happen. Of course, the US has more aviation than any other nation at this time, which is on the East Coast, you know, four o'clock in the afternoon, just getting into the busiest time of the entire week. And the Federal Aviation Administration have basically just said. You must stop flying. I can read you the statement. Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety, attention all aircraft operators. By order of the Federal Aviation Command Centre, all airports are ground stopped, all departing. Traffic, and this would be literally thousands of flights due to go off at about this time across the US, should remain ground-stopped until further notice. And then crucially, and this will affect lots of British people who are on their way to the US at the moment, the flights that took off maybe around lunchtime are now reaching their destinations. I'm in. International flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis. Does that mean they can be turned back? Well, they could be diverted. The last time, exactly as you say, that this happened was 9-11. And as a result of that, clearly the flights were grounded for many days. But the inbound... I think we're going to have to wait and see if we can get ...picture was that flights were diverted typically to Canada. Some of them were flown back to the UK. I suspect that in this case, we will not see that happening exactly as... It did play out last time, but this is extremely worrying. And at the heart, it appears to be air traffic control problems. And of course, we've had many of those in the UK. If you remember back, for instance, to August bank holiday 2023, the system basically almost completely shut down. Some flights did get away and that cost 2000 flights and hundreds of thousands of people had their travel plans. All messed up. So I think this will be on an even bigger scale. And of course, if you've got loved ones who are either on their way to the US or indeed booked to fly back tonight because we're getting to the stage, you know, first flights will typically leave New York and the East Coast in a couple of hours. That is going to be a big concern as well. So, yeah, news coming out of the US that is. He's... horrifying in terms of the effect it is going to have on people's plans. Now, lots of people have been asking about Simon Marks, who was stuck on the tarmac for a while in Houston. His battery's about to go, but I think we've got him on the line now. Hi, Simon. Morning, Clive. So tell us about your experience then. Well, I left Washington at around lunchtime, early afternoon, to head down here to Houston. I'm spending the weekend in Houston, Texas, and we were in the middle of the flight when those of us who were connected to the airline's Wi-Fi started seeing reports about this ground halt that the Federal Aviation Administration had issued, and about 20 minutes after that, There's various... Passengers were beginning to talk to one another about this. The pilot came on the intercom and confirmed that this was indeed a thing. told us that we need not worry, that the plane was going to continue on its way to Houston and that he was confident that there would be no issue with the landing and indeed there was no issue with the landing. We even arrived slightly early but then sat on the tarmac for about two hours because the ground halt by that point was completely in force so all of the planes that were supposed to be leaving Bush International Airport here in Houston and heading off to Other parts of the country and other parts of the world were obviously not able to push back from their gates. And so all of those planes that were landing were stuck on the tarmac, unable to get to gates so that we and all the other passengers involved could disembark. That process took about two hours because they had to empty the planes of passengers who were hoping to depart after cancelling those flights. move those planes away from the gates so that the arriving planes could pull up to the gates and disembark and so now I am actually in a very comfortable Uber making my way Anyway, to where I need to get to here but there's I think it's fair to say a degree of chaos at Houston International Airport only one flight leaving from there and that's because it's a medical evacuation flight although we now know that this ground halt has been lifted by the Federal Aviation Administration. There's been a briefing underway at the White House by the Director of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, and the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. Thank you very much. They don't fully seem to know exactly what went wrong, but there was certainly a problem. with what they describe as legacy communications equipment that started in Chicago and then moved out to other parts of the country and it meant that in some parts of the country their ability the ability of air traffic controllers to communicate by radio with pilots was hampered and that's obviously a massive problem. Now they made an impassioned plea for additional money to improve America's creaking air traffic control system. Indeed, I have to say, to listen to the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy describe the state of America's air traffic control system, one wonders why anyone listening to that would ever board a plane in the United States again before it is modernized. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. I want Congress to give us emergency funding. This is bipartisan. This is American. I want $50 billion. He blamed Congress for all of this, insisting they simply hadn't given the Federal Aviation Administration enough money to modernize the air traffic control system. There were lots of tributes paid from behind the White House podium, quite naturally, to President Trump for leading America out of this crisis. And there were also even also even name checked from behind the podium was the new president's chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the most extreme figure ever to be any president's official gatekeeper at the White House. All of this happening a week after he took over in that position. Stephen Miller put together all of the intelligence assets of the White House. We were in multiple times talking to the president about what was happening in the airspace. A complete engagement by President Trump's team. They were asked repeatedly whether there was any link with any kind of rollout of new AI software that has been taking place in the air traffic control system here over the last week. During the AI program, you guys just introduced a smart program for the FAA. So as I mentioned, this is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that's been deployed did not go down. They said they didn't have any reason to believe that there was, but they couldn't rule it out. And they also said the same sort of thing about whether this was any kind of cyber attack. They weren't in a position to rule things out, but there was no reason they insisted to believe that it was. But I do want to emphasize, Clive, the overarching message from that briefing. And we are... 13 days away from Thanksgiving here in the United States, the biggest travel holiday of the year. The overarching message of the briefing was that America's air traffic control system is in absolutely woeful condition. It cannot be fixed tomorrow. And according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, unless Congress immediately gives him another 50... billion dollars of money to spend upgrading the system these kind of collapses he insisted are going to continue happening. So I think there's no better time than the present to actually give us the money and let us finish the build. What went down was old right it was the old legacy equipment it failed and listen it's going to continue to fail. So travelers across the United States or So all those people thinking of coming here, Be aware. I mean, I have to say, as someone who flies all the time here, it was a deeply, deeply alarming briefing. Yeah, absolutely. The good news is that things are reopening now, but even so, it's going to take days for all these planes to end up back in the right places, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Every time there's one of these system problems. I mean, this is only the second full ground halt that we've seen here since 9-11. The last one happened for about 90 minutes, and that was due to a software problem. This went on for much longer. But any kind of disruption obviously means that the aviation industry, a critical pillar of America's economy, is totally backed up, scrambling to try and figure out how to get planes back into the air and how to get planes. ...back to where they need to be. Certainly, by the time I landed at Houston tonight and was looking at the departure boards, at least 95% of the planes on those departure boards were showing cancelled. There were a few still saying delayed. But, I mean, the vast majority of travellers at... Bush Intercontinental Airport were voting with their feet and concluding that they weren't getting anywhere tonight. And they were all scrambling to get into taxes and hire cars. So nothing's going to move out of there tonight, appreciably. And it's going to be days across the country before all of this disruption works its way through the system. And again, we are on the eve, you know, we are so close to the biggest travel week of the year. I mean, we're one week away from the biggest travel week of the year. The Thanksgiving holiday is on Thursday week. And, you know, I mean, clearly by then things will have been brought back to normal. But I think there will be nervousness among travelers based on what they've heard tonight. And, you know, the transportation secretary telling them this This is going to happen again.