Why the FAA grounded flights

Brut America

The FAA grounded all U.S. flights the morning of Jan. 11, causing more than 5,000 flights to be delayed. By 9 a.m., flights were beginning to return to normal operations. The White House said there was no evidence of a cyberattack.

Transcript

00:00After a nationwide safety system failure, the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA,

00:05grounded all domestic flights on Wednesday morning.

00:09The system, noticed to air missions, alerts pilots about upcoming conditions that could

00:13affect flight safety and operates separately from air traffic control.

00:18The alerts include information like lights being out on the runway, an airshow taking

00:22place nearby, or safety tower lights being out.

00:26While it is a national system, past outages have typically only affected specific regions,

00:31not the entire country.

00:32Although flights usually take off and land without needing one of these notifications,

00:35it's still critical for safety that pilots receive these alerts, if there are any.

00:40The FAA lifted the grounding by 9am and said in a tweet, we continue to look into the cause

00:45of the initial problem.

00:46The White House Press Secretary, Karine Jumpier, said there was no evidence of a cyber attack

00:51at this point.

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