US flights grounded: White House rules out cyberattack, cause not clear, says Biden

Flights across the United States were affected by a technical glitch with a computer system in an unprecedented disruption on Wednesday.

Operations gradually resumed after flights across the US were grounded due to a glitch in a computer system of the US regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). However, the White House denied any evidence of cyberattack and said the regulator is working to get to the root cause of what happened.

“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point. The President has directed the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the causes and provide regular updates. Again, this is incredibly important, a top priority, the safety of Americans who are flying every day,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference.

“We want to make sure that they’re safe. This is a top priority for the President, top priority for the Department of Transportation and certainly the FAA. And so we want to make sure that we get to the root causes so this does not happen again,” she said.

Over 9,600 flights were delayed and over 1,300 flights were cancelled, according to FlightAware. This is the first national grounding of flights in about two decades.The number of cancellations and delays has continued to climb despite the agency lifting a ground stop.

BIDEN ORDERS PROBE

President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into an FAA system outage that grounded flights across the country Wednesday morning and said the cause of the failure was unknown.

“We’ll respond at that time,” Biden said. Asked if the outage was caused by a cyberattack, he said, “We don’t know.”

“They don’t know what the cause is,” Biden said. “Aircraft can still land safely just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is.”

A nationwide ground stop imposed by the over a computer issue that forced a 90-minute halt to all U.S. departing flights. Major carriers like Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N), United Airlines (AAL.O), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and American Airlines (AAL.O) all reported 40 per cent or more of flights Wednesday delayed or cancelled, reported Reuters.

The FAA said flight operations gradually resumed and it expected departures to resume at airports at 9 am eastern time.

‘SAFETY OF AMERICANS OUR TOP PRIORITY’

“Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been directed an after action process to determine exactly the root causes and recommended the next steps,” the White House Press Secretary said.

“The FAA and DOT will continue to be transparent here about the causes of the issue and how we will ensure a system outage of this magnitude does not happen again,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Our number one focus is to make sure that the safety of Americans who are flying. We want to make sure that they’re safe. And the second part of this is to make sure that this does not happen again. And so, again, there’s going to be an after action process and we’ll move from there,” she said.

The FAA, she said, is working aggressively to get to the bottom of the root causes of what happened with the system outage today and making sure that it doesn’t happen again.

“Clearly, the safety of Americans who are flying every day is a number one priority and what they’re going to do is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” the press secretary said.

The FAA officials also echoed a similar sentiment and said that there was no evidence of a cyberattack. The regulator said a preliminary review traced the outage to a damaged database file and an investigation is underway. The same file corrupted both the main system and its backup, people familiar with the review, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.