00:00First of all, I'd like to start with an apology, sincere apology to the American traveling public.
00:04Tens of thousands of Americans had their flights disrupted yesterday.
00:08And I want you to understand we did that out of an abundance of caution.
00:11I'd also like to add my thanks, echo what the Secretary said.
00:15We had controllers who worked throughout the night, helping through the recovery, maintenance technicians.
00:20Our airline partners, our airport partners, everybody came together to try to mitigate this just as quickly as possible.
00:28And to take care of the travelers that were out there.
00:31So, again, I'm sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons.
00:35As the Secretary mentioned, the system started to exhibit some instability.
00:39And over a course of about 45 minutes, we could not assess the cause of the instability,
00:44at which point, about 345 yesterday, we implemented a ground stop.
00:49We did that because we felt it was helpful to remove pressure from the system,
00:53holding airplanes on the ground while we continue to work through the root cause analysis of the instability in the
01:00system,
01:00and ultimately to relieve stress and complexity in the airspace.
01:05I think that was the right call, and we stand behind that.
01:09As we went into Friday, we had 50,000 flights scheduled to operate.
01:14When we went into the ground stop at approximately 345 p.m. East Coast time yesterday,
01:20we had completed about 30,000 of those flights, either on the ground or in the air.
01:27So we had 20,000 more flights to complete.
01:30Over the course of the four-hour ground stop, we were ultimately able to recover about 8,000 of those
01:3820,000 flights.
01:3912,000 we were unable to recover.
01:41For those 12,000 flights, the breakdown is roughly 3,000 were private jet general aviation flights and 9,000
01:49commercial flights.
01:51This morning, the system remains stable, and our airline partners are working through the operational recovery.
02:00What does that mean?
02:01Well, of course, we have crews and aircraft that are out of position, the 12,000 flights that were lost.
02:07Those crews, pilots and flight attendants, need to get to their points of reconnection with their schedules.
02:16Our airline partners are working through that.
02:18We do anticipate somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 of the 41,000 flights that are scheduled today likely
02:26will cancel.
02:27So we will still have delays and cancellations today.
02:30But that will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow.
02:34And based on everything that we're hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they'll be able to have full
02:39schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday.
02:42So I do think the worst is behind us, but we still do have a significant amount of recovery work
02:48to do with our airline stakeholder group.
02:50I do think we've identified the fault, and I want to reiterate we see zero evidence of anything nefarious and
03:01zero evidence of anything AI related.
03:04So we want to be clear that we have an equipment issue, and we're working through what this defective piece
03:11of equipment was.
03:12Again, as the Secretary said, was it a faulty installation, was it a faulty configuration, or was it just a
03:18bad piece of router technology that we put into this system that propagated these errors?
03:25When we have that root cause analysis complete, we'll share it with you.
03:30Also, as the Secretary indicated, I've communicated with all four corners of both chambers.
03:36This is a bipartisan issue. Safety is paramount, but efficiency and reliability to the system is also extremely important for
03:45the American traveling public.
03:47So I do believe that we'll have a very transparent hearing on what actually happened.
03:57Again, we're giving you the best information that we have at our disposal this morning.
04:01And I want to reiterate the fact that safety is, in fact, the most important thing.
04:06So we will always, out of abundance of caution, ensure that every flight that we put into the airspace will
04:11be operated safely.
