00:00We will take you through one last news report, and it's a report with regards to a certain chaotic episode
00:06that unfurled in the American skies.
00:09It's a rare nationwide ground stop, grounded every departing U.S. flight for hours,
00:15cancelling over 6,600 flights and leaving tens of thousands of passengers completely stranded.
00:22Officials have, however, ruled out a cyber attack, but questions still mount over aging infrastructure.
00:28Here's a report on the same, bringing you all the details as we leave you at the end of the
00:33bulletin with it.
00:34Thank you for tuning in.
00:38Over 15,000 flights either delayed or cancelled, tens of thousands of passengers stranded,
00:45and one outdated air traffic control system.
00:49For about five hours on Friday, America's skies went silent in a rare nationwide ground stop
00:56triggered by a telecommunications outage, which was later fixed.
01:01But the backlogs still affected thousands.
01:05I was headed to go see my son and to a conference down in L.A.
01:08And, yeah, then I got delays on my phone saying that the flight was delayed twice.
01:16And then on the way here, my son's girlfriend actually said,
01:19hey, you know that there's a whole closure going?
01:21And I looked up and I said, oh, I guess I'm not going anywhere.
01:25But I'm here just to see if I can get out.
01:28The nationwide stop left 1.5 million people, which is close to 15 lakh passengers, in limbo.
01:35The ground stop is the largest since the 9-11 attacks.
01:39The situation was so dire that U.S. airports ran out of tarmac space to park the grounded planes.
01:48Is there something bigger going on?
01:50Should I be flying?
01:52Should I not?
01:53I've even considered getting in the car and driving 15 hours up there,
01:59thinking that might be safer.
02:01So, yes, it is concerning.
02:03Absolutely.
02:05Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wain Mullen assured the public that they were not in danger.
02:10Mullen said there was no sign of a threat to the United States
02:13and no evidence the ground stop was caused by a cyber attack.
02:18However, authorities have refused to rule out the possibility of an AI agent going wrong.
02:25I want to make sure we say this again.
02:27There's no reason for the public to be afraid or scared for your loved ones.
02:32This isn't another 9-11.
02:35I just can't repeat that enough.
02:37People are making that assumption because that's the last time we had a nationwide ground stoppage.
02:42This is a telecommunication outage.
02:45There are reports that the FAA was rolling out a new AI traffic control system today.
02:51Has there been any link between that?
02:53We're looking at that.
02:55That's part of something that obviously through CISA at DHS, we're taking a look.
03:03We're working with our counterparts throughout all agencies.
03:07Trump's Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned that a multi-billion dollar investment was urgently needed
03:14to completely overhaul U.S. air travel.
03:17And his ask?
03:18$50 billion for new hardware, new software, new telecommunications.
03:24Duffy claims ground stop was caused by an upgrade to old air traffic control technology
03:29that overloaded the routers.
03:33Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data and they went down.
03:39And I shouldn't say they went down.
03:41They started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers.
03:46And because of that, we shut the system down.
03:49The warning signs are hard to ignore.
03:52America's air traffic control system is aging, overloaded and stretched to its limits.
03:58FAA has lifted the ground stop, meaning that the flights can resume.
04:04Now, that doesn't mean that everything will be, you know, fine in the next hour or so.
04:08Flights have been delayed.
04:10Passengers have been impacted.
04:11You know, there have been additional delays that will occur.
04:14I mean, this obviously delays will continue in the night, in the late night, even early morning
04:20for some flights around, you know, thousands of flights also have been canceled.
04:24So, we still do not know what the reason is, Anisha.
04:27We do know that's a communications failure.
04:29If one such telecommunications outage can ground an entire nation,
04:34it is time for the government to take a good look into upgrading the system.
04:38With Rohit Sharma, Bureau Report, India Today.
