Nationwide Ground Stop Lifted by FAA 

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Nick Watt (1:00)

This is CNN Breaking News.

Anderson Cooper (1:05)

Well, as you know, for only the second time since 9-11, the FAA grounds each and every departing plane at every airport nationwide. After communications meltdown, leaves thousands of flights already airborne unable to talk to air traffic control. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. And as those airborne flights make their way into airports already clogged with grounded planes and angry passengers, we're starting to get the beginnings of a picture of what happened, what might have caused it. We are also waiting to hear any minute now from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and DHS Secretary Mark-Wayne Mullen at the White House.

Their cameras are already in position there. We are just waiting for them.

And that could happen any second now. Here's what it looks like at the worst of it. According to the tracking site Flight Radar 24, a little more than 4,000 flights were in the air when the FAA ordered the stoppage around 4 this afternoon. The reason, problems at the 22 long-distance flight control centers across the country which handle jet flights at or above 18,000 feet. You see them outlined in red on the map. They were unable to talk with those planes, again, thousands of them, as they made their way to their destinations. Now, some of the crews in some of those planes had to resort to using the International Emergency radio frequency to talk to one another to keep themselves separated from one another. Right now, FlightAware reports over 5,000 flights cancellations and over 9,800 delays. Just a short time ago, an airline source told CNS Pete Monteen that the FAA has told them that this all was caused by a problem with computer network routers. The issue, according to this source, is believed to have originated at Chicago's Midway Airport, then cascaded nationwide. Earlier, you see him there, DHS Secretary Mullin said that there was no indication this was the result of anything nefarious.

Markwayne Mullin (2:54)

Just to make sure we understand, there is no indication and we had no reason to believe as of right now that this was a threat to the United States.

This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA. Out of abundant accotion, 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. 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.

Anderson Cooper (3:38)

We expect to hear from him, as I said, any moment. Fortunately so far, nothing has gone dangerously wrong as flights continue landing. In the map of US airspace, you see they're starting to empty out. Pilots are trained for this sort of thing. Even student pilots like this one on his first solo flight. Listen.

SPEAKER_6 (3:56)

Alpha, Meacham Tower, there is a ground stop nationwide. I advise you land your aircraft.

SPEAKER_2 (4:00)

Where would you like to land?

SPEAKER_7 (4:03)

Ma'am, I'm a student pilot. Honestly, this is my first time doing solo cross country, and I don't know what to do.

Anderson Cooper (4:11)

You can imagine what that's like. Again, we are waiting to hear from federal officials, and we have reporters across the country, along with aviation security experts across the board, starting with CNN's Pete Monteen in San Francisco. Pete, as we await this press conference, I understand you have some reporting the outages as a result of an issue with network routers possibly originating at Chicago's Midway. What have you learned?

Pete Muntean (4:33)

Possible network routers, according to an airline source that has been briefed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which had a trickle-down effect apparently on both telecommunications lines and radio frequencies at air traffic control centers. Those are the facilities, 22 of them nationwide, responsible for aircraft at their cruising altitudes in route centers, meaning not airplanes on approach, not airplanes recently departed, planes when they are in the air at high altitude, sort of a linchpin in the system. When you don't have those, the entire system comes tumbling down. Those telecom issues also carry, in some cases, the radar scope picture that air traffic controllers rely on in order to see the airplanes in their airspace. I'm also learning this now, that airports are now running out of space because of this nationwide ground stop that has been in place since about 4 or 3 o'clock Eastern time. Reagan National Airport is now officially running out of space to the point that the FAA has put out an alert saying the airport can accept no more flight diversions, meaning no more flights that were not planned to land at DCA because of this ground stop. This is huge, and right now, the analysis from airline analytics firm Serium, the new numbers say there were about 11,000 flights slated to depart today. When this ground stop went into place, that means about 1.5 million passengers have been stranded by the nationwide airspace system, now in complete meltdown mode. We will hear from Secretary Mullen and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy soon about what the plan is going forward because we know that airlines, they tell me that they are considering essentially stopping all flights for the remainder of tonight. Probably a smart move because there is really no place for planes to go, so many planes and crews out of position, not many options for airlines, but for them to unplug and plug their systems back in in hopes of getting on the right foot tomorrow.