The United States announced on Friday that it had lifted an hours-long suspension of flights at airports across the country. Senior officials attributed the disruption to outdated equipment, ruling out a cyberattack or any connection to the outage affecting Microsoft’s systems.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a late-night briefing at the White House that US airspace had been “reopened” to air traffic, while warning that it would take some time for travel operations to return to normal after the disruption.
“At 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time today, we reopened the airspace,” Duffy said, adding: “Does that mean every flight will take off immediately? Operations will be slow.”
The disruption came a day after Duffy and the White House formally asked Congress for $30 billion in funding to modernise and upgrade the United States’ air traffic control system.
Duffy added that the equipment had been “overloaded with data, which caused it to malfunction.”
“The outdated equipment is what failed, and I think the question for the American people is: Do you want Congress to fund this?” he said.
He nevertheless stressed that air travel remained safe for Americans.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed speculation that the incident was the result of a coordinated cyberattack against the United States or was linked to the Microsoft service outage.
“Welcome to Friday the 13th, right? I want to make sure everyone understands that there is no connection between this incident and Microsoft. I know many people jumped to that conclusion,” he said.
Mullin added that “there was no cyberattack, in fact.”
“When we begin examining cyber threats and attacks, some people usually come forward and say, ‘We did it,’” he explained, adding that authorities had “not detected any evidence of that.”
However, he noted that US security and law enforcement agencies were continuing their investigations and had not ruled out any possibility.
The two ministers also defended President Donald Trump, who had not yet commented publicly on the suspension of air traffic.
“President Trump immediately called people into his office,” Mullin said, adding: “We were in contact.”
Source: (AFP)
