FAA Ground Stop Map Shows Where Travelers Face Longest Delays

详细摘要

Aviation experts warned that Friday will be the biggest travel disruption since 9/11 after FAA issued a nationwide ground stop.

An unprecedented telecommunications failure triggered a nationwide ground stop for about four hours Friday, stranding an estimated 1.5 million travelers across the United States and resulting in 9,814 flight delays and 5,117 cancellations.

Travelers scrambled for hotels, rental cars and attempted to rebook flights as aviation experts warned that Friday was poised to become the biggest disruption to travel since 9/11 after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all departing aircraft to remain on the ground following communications problems affecting air traffic control centers.

The airspace was reopened at 8:45 p.m., but officials warned it would take days to clear the backlog. Trump administration officials say the shutdown shows the country must update its aging, overloaded infrastructure.

"This is a national security risk," Markwayne Mullin, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, said late Friday.

The FAA said it had issued the order after communication issues impacted multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers, with technicians investigating the problem.

"All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis," the FAA said in an advisory.

Ken Gray, former pilot and intelligence officer, and now a professor at the University of New Haven, compared the fallout of the ground stop to that of the 9/11 terror attacks.

"When 9/11 happened ... they did an incredible job getting planes down on the ground. They emptied the airspace out within two hours and got all the aircraft that were in the air on the ground," he said. "But once they got it all on the ground, it took several days for it to be safe to allow the aircraft back up.

"Likewise, once they get everything back on the ground, even if everything is working again, it is going to take some time to get the aircraft back in towards their destinations because everything is out of sync as far as flights go."

文章开头，摘自Newsweek。如需阅读全文，请前往媒体网站。