US Airlines grounded

Leanna Byrne (0:01)

When Microsoft goes down, the world feels it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

The outage really hit us hard. We're really in the fix right now.

Irene Sumter (0:07)

Are we heavily relying on Microsoft on this? Should we start thinking of what would be their plan B in case it happens again?

Leanna Byrne (0:14)

It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne. A major Microsoft outage has disrupted businesses in more than 70 countries. We'll hear from a banker in Kenya who's counting the cost. And a breaking story, flights are grounded across the US due to an air traffic control communications issue. Also, the Nvidia scandal causes rouse in the White House.

Our top story, we're going to start with the news that all flights in the United States have been grounded until further notice due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. That's according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. It's understood the shutdown followed a communications issue affecting all the FAA's regional air traffic control centers. Here's how it's been reported in the United States. World 15 is a major breaking news.

SPEAKER_4 (1:07)

All flights are now being grounded across the nation. Now to more breaking news. The Federal Aviation Administration says that it was halting all departing flights due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.

Leanna Byrne (1:25)

There you go. Now as it stands, no flights due to land in the United States can take off. But let's get some more information from our travel journalist, Simon Calder. Simon, thanks for joining us.

Simon Calder (1:35)

Well, I am so, so sorry that this is happening. It is an absolutely desperate situation for more than a million people. Those are the people who were booked to depart from US airports over the next few hours. This has happened at the absolute peak time of the week.

Friday afternoon, it basically came into effect, US time, about 4 p.m. on the East Coast, 1 p.m. on the West Coast. You've got the world's busiest airport, of course, Atlanta, Chicago, extremely busy, and everywhere else, there are planes all ready to go, many people with connections. And while, of course, as with any time in the US, there were plenty of aircraft in the air, those appear to be landing fairly normally. I was watching a British Airways flight coming into New York, JFK made a perfectly ordinary landing and taxied to the gate. Everybody's safe, of course, but anybody who has got a transfer flight will not be making their connection. And crucially, of course, all these inbound transatlantic jets are supposed to be going back tonight, and it's not at all clear if any of them will be, which creates huge problems for tens of thousands of foreigners who were perhaps finished a business trip, a vacation in the US and are now wondering how they might possibly get home.

Leanna Byrne (3:13)

Absolutely huge problems, very unfortunate, but it's also extremely extraordinary, isn't it, Simon? I mean, when was the last time the United States grounded flights on this scale?

Simon Calder (3:22)

Well, you have to go back 25 years to the dark days of 9-11, when, of course, aircraft were being used as guided missiles, and all air traffic was shut down across the UK for several days. Now, in the past few minutes, the Homeland Security Secretary, Mark Guay Mullin, has been talking to reporters and absolutely stressing that this is not something that there appears to be a, that there is no, quote, nefarious attack against us.

But it appears to be a telecommunications problem, which is not unknown in air traffic control. You go back three years, the entire British air traffic control system came to a halt because of technical problems. So it's, yes, air traffic control keeps people safe by keeping aircraft apart.

Those, and the natural thing to do, if the system isn't working, is just to stop people flying. So it's just an absolute mess. And when things do get back to normal, planes, pilots, cabin crew, passengers will be scattered all over the place. And it's going to take a great deal of time to get people where they need to be.

Leanna Byrne (4:43)

Well, we've also got Mike Arnott, a spokesman for Serium Aviation Analytics. And Mike, thanks for joining us. I believe you have the numbers, how many planes, how many passengers are affected.

Mike Arnott (4:55)

Right, well, there's at least 11,000 flights that are still scheduled to depart after 4 p.m. Eastern time, which is around 9 p.m. in the UK.

That's going to impact at least, as Simon said, a million passengers. And it's probably upwards of 1.5 million passengers who will be stranded at the airport or, you know, unsure when their flight might depart. What we do know is that some 481 flights have been canceled so far, which is around 1.8% of the total departures today. The other thing is that there are planes that are in the air now, and there are flights that are going to divert from their intended destination. So now what we know is that there's 603 flights that were already in the air today that diverted to a different airport than they had originally intended. Most of them are returning to their origin airport. Chicago O'Hare, for example, has 28 flights that took off that were in the air and are now back on their way or are landing in Chicago. So it's quite disruptive for the industry and for passengers.