FAA caused thousands of flight delays and still struggling to get caught up
Airports across the country were grounded on Wednesday morning as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) scrambled to restore a failing computer system. This system caused 4,000 flights to be delayed before it came back online.
The cause of the failure remains unknown, though the FAA and White House have said that there’s no evidence of a cyberattack. Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary, tweeted that the system which the FAA uses in order to notify pilots of temporarily closed runways and airspace, as well as other essential safety information, has been “fully restored”. He also mentioned that he had “directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.”
After Southwest Airlines had to delay thousands of flights over multiple days due to their own system failures, the sudden failure of the system places Buttigieg firmly in sight for a newly emboldened Republican caucus eager to pound the Biden administration over its policies and decisions.
Without much traction, Republicans have tried several tacks to poke holes in Buttigieg, who is still a contender for a future political run.
“When they find out what caused the outage, I want DOT to report directly to me,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday morning, referring to a conversation he’d had with Buttigieg about the issue.
