Nationwide Ground Stop: America's Airspace on Hold

SPEAKER_1 (0:30)

We're making adversaries when we should be making friends.

Markwayne Mullin (0:32)

They've been saying death to America for decades.

SPEAKER_1 (0:36)

We've been saying death to Iran for decades as well.

SPEAKER_3 (0:38)

Stephen Miller is a stone cold racist. His track record speaks for itself.

SPEAKER_4 (0:43)

There are so many criminals in this administration. There are going to be many, many, many investigations. I imagine many subpoenas, and we have to follow wherever the evidence takes us.

SPEAKER_5 (1:09)

Sean Hannity to you, the new Sean Hannity Show. More behind the scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.

Breaking news now, here's Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity (1:25)

All right, news roundup and information overload. Our toll free, it's 800-941. Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, we will get to your calls. I know there's a lot of panic that's going on in the country. I would urge people, wait, watch, let's see what happens. We know that Markwayne Mullin is now giving an update as to what is happening here. We know that there has been a ground stoppage. An extremely rare nationwide ground stop has been issued all across the US. What we have been told up to this point is because of extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.

Markwayne Mullin says he has spoken to the president about this, about the ground stop. So every level of government is aware of it. My top sources in law enforcement, I've been communicating with them all throughout the last break are telling me they don't know, but it is being taken seriously.

Anyway, long story short, the agency issued the advisory ground report. Take this Markwayne Mullin thing, Linda. I'm getting an important call that might give me information. What is it that you're doing to take this life?

Markwayne Mullin (2:42)

This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA. Out of abundant caution, we have grounded all the flights, and all the flights are accounted for. As incoming flights, either internationally or the flights that are currently still in the air, we'll be dealing with those case by case.

As you can imagine, there will be a priority list as they start coming in. But, as I will repeat myself, there was no prior indication, there was no indication as of yet that this was an nefarious attack against us. It's just a telecommunication outage as of right now.

SPEAKER_3 (3:24)

Secretary Mullin, you're saying that there's no indication yet that this was a nefarious act. Does that mean that you just haven't seen the evidence, and it's possible that this could be either a cyber attack or some kind of an AI intrusion?

Markwayne Mullin (3:39)

Well, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves anytime something like this happens. I mean, the last time I believe that we've had a national ground stoppage was 9-11. Of course, through DHS, we're getting a ton of calls saying, is this a terrorist attack? Is this a terrorist attack? Everybody's safe. There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones, if they're flying or anything like that. I just want to make sure everybody's at ease about that.

As we investigate what caused this, you always got to assume that as many cyber attacks that take place, you make that assumption. So, but as of right now, that's not known. So we're going to continue to work. The first thing we want to do is make sure we restore the communications, we get all the flights on the ground, and then we get back normal operations. But we're going to continue to work to find out what the root of the cause is.

SPEAKER_3 (4:35)

So it's your assessment that Microsoft yesterday, the FAA today, is a coincidence?

Markwayne Mullin (4:43)

I don't see any reason to connect those two at all. Those are separate issues.

SPEAKER_7 (4:48)

Just to be clear, can you definitively rule out that this is not a cyber attack? And how long do you expect this outage to last?

SPEAKER_8 (4:56)

What is the cause of it?

Markwayne Mullin (4:57)

So we're working with Secretary Duffy on this. We're not ruling out anything at this point. The first thing is the safety of everybody that's flying. We are assured that everybody is safe. Everybody that's going to be in the air that's currently on a plane, loved ones, as I said, we're going to get you on the ground, and we're doing it in a safe manner. To say that we can rule out anything, that's not what we do at this point. The first thing we want to do is make sure everybody is safe and we restore operations.