INTERNATIONAL DESK — Flights in the United States were resuming on Saturday after being grounded for several hours due to a major communications outage, though authorities said returning to normal operations would take time. The nationwide stop sparked widespread chaos and left hundreds of thousands of passengers in limbo, with some pulled off planes moments before departure by airline staff who appeared in the dark about unfolding events.
Government officials said the incident was a major communications outage caused by decades old technology. The incident marked only the second time such an alert had been issued in US airspace since the 9/11 attacks. Federal Aviation Authority officials lifted the groundstop after around four hours, with President Donald Trump’s administration saying there was no evidence the outage was the result of foul play.
“This is a legacy system problem,” said Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. “We have old, old switches, old routers. It’s an old system that went down, and went down everywhere.