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As you may have seen, there’s currently a nationwide ground-stop across all US airports, with nothing allowed to take off… or land without specific permission and direction. Only the second time since 9/11 this has happened, the last being in January 2023 when a pilot notification system went down. There are unconfirmed rumours of a technical fault possibly related to communication issues, but no indication it’s related to the current worldwide Microsoft outage issues.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wouldn't say what was behind the communication issue, but told reporters: "We're getting a ton of calls saying, ' Is this a terrorist attack?' Everyone's safe. There's no need to be concerned about your loved ones. As we investigate what caused this, you've always got to assume, with as many cyber attacks that take place, but that's not known. First thing, we're going to restore communications then get normal operations” and added there is “no reason" to connect this to the Microsoft outage. “We want to assure... this isn't a safety [issue] to American people, or another 9/11 - that's what a lot of people are trying to make a comparison to, and that's not the case."
I would strongly suspect it may be related to this:
On 10 November, FAA announced it was expanding the use of an $875 million AI tool known as ‘SMART’, following a successful test in Washington DC. The acronym stands for “Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories” and the tool is designed to assist in managing air traffic across all 22 centres of the entire national airspace system by re-routing flights.
FAA claims that the system will “reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The system combines “weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics” to predict delays and suggest optimised alternative routes that are human-validated by an expert team before being passed on to Air Traffic Control.
Currently there’s also a National Radar Outage on radar.weather.gov. which may well be related to the Microsoft issues, but Air Traffic Controllers typically do not use this system to track adverse weather conditions.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wouldn't say what was behind the communication issue, but told reporters: "We're getting a ton of calls saying, ' Is this a terrorist attack?' Everyone's safe. There's no need to be concerned about your loved ones. As we investigate what caused this, you've always got to assume, with as many cyber attacks that take place, but that's not known. First thing, we're going to restore communications then get normal operations” and added there is “no reason" to connect this to the Microsoft outage. “We want to assure... this isn't a safety [issue] to American people, or another 9/11 - that's what a lot of people are trying to make a comparison to, and that's not the case."
I would strongly suspect it may be related to this:
On 10 November, FAA announced it was expanding the use of an $875 million AI tool known as ‘SMART’, following a successful test in Washington DC. The acronym stands for “Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories” and the tool is designed to assist in managing air traffic across all 22 centres of the entire national airspace system by re-routing flights.
FAA claims that the system will “reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The system combines “weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics” to predict delays and suggest optimised alternative routes that are human-validated by an expert team before being passed on to Air Traffic Control.
Currently there’s also a National Radar Outage on radar.weather.gov. which may well be related to the Microsoft issues, but Air Traffic Controllers typically do not use this system to track adverse weather conditions.
