U.S. airspace officially reopened Friday night after a rare, hours-long nationwide ground stop brought air travel to a near standstill across the country, prompting top Trump administration officials to rule out a cyberattack while issuing an urgent plea to Congress for $50 billion to replace the nation’s aging air traffic control infrastructure.
During an evening press briefing in the White House’s James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had lifted the departure freeze at 8:15 p.m. EST, roughly four and a half hours after communication issues across all 22 regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers forced the agency to halt flights.
While Duffy confirmed that the airspace is open and controllers are working to move as many flights as possible tonight, he cautioned travelers to expect slow-moving operations and lingering delays as airlines work to unwind thousands of cancellations and schedule disruptions ahead of the upcoming Thanksgiving travel rush.
Addressing widespread online speculation and security concerns, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also opened the briefing by dismissing rumors that the telecommunications failure was tied to a recent Microsoft outage or a hostile foreign intrusion.
“There is no connection between this and Microsoft,” Mullin stated, adding unequivocally, “There is no cyber-attack.”
Mullin noted that federal investigators across the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the Department of War found zero digital footprints or chatter indicating a nefarious act.
Emphasizing that the grounding was ordered purely out of an abundance of caution, Mullin then reassured families that “the public was never at danger through this process,” stressing that there were never any flights or passengers at risk. He credited the rapid interagency response to the team still working behind the scenes and the leadership structure built by President Donald Trump.
