On the other side of the news when the American skies were closed for four hours; Where did the crisis come from?
On Friday, November 13, passengers at American airports were faced with a strange scene: flights were canceled or canceled one after another, and the flight board was full of the words "delayed" and "cancelled". The reason? Disturbance in the American air control and communication network!
But the story wasn't just a technical break; Analysts say this incident somehow showed the weakness of America's critical infrastructure.
what happened
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide grounding of outgoing flights due to communication disruptions at several air traffic control centers.
The outage lasted more than four hours and lasted until 8:15 PM EST.
According to FlightRadar24's preliminary statistics, more than 6,600 flights were canceled and 8,600 flights were delayed. Another Reuters report put the number of cancellations at nearly 10,000 flights by 11:30 p.m.
It was the largest flight disruption in the US since the 9/11 attacks. The previous nationwide shutdown was in January 2023 and lasted about 90 minutes.
Reuters; Issuing orders to stop Reuters flights; Narration of trapped passengers.
what went wrong
According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, switches and routers in the FAA's old communications network did not function under data pressure, creating inconsistent radar and communications data.
Officials at the Ministry of Internal Security said that until then they had found no evidence of a cyber attack or the involvement of a malicious artificial intelligence system; However, the exact cause of the disorder is still being investigated.
But the main problem is older than this event!
A 2024 report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that of the FAA's 138 air traffic control systems, 51 are outdated and unreliable and 54 are in a potentially unstable state. This means that more than three quarters of the tested systems are not in good condition!
Old gear parts are even so rare that they have to be obtained from online auctions or 3D printing!