US airspace reopens after flights grounded for several hours

Ankur Desai (0:00)

This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hi, I'm Ankur Desai, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 14th of November, these are our main stories. US airspace reopens after having to ground all flights for only the third time in 25 years. The US Transport Secretary blames an overloaded system and calls for a complete overhaul of outdated technology. The US Commerce Secretary is coming under criticism for his failure to ban exports of advanced NVIDIA chips to a company linked to a suspected Chinese spy. And how the Microsoft outage brought businesses around the world to a standstill.

Also in this podcast, more than 1.5 million people in Peru celebrate mass with the Pope who once lived there as a bishop.

Jonathan Head (0:51)

And It'll be a great show because Eurovision always is. So they've got three minutes in which to make a big impression. All 11 contestants have been working hard and I have to say there are some great songs there.

Ankur Desai (1:03)

Thailand gears up for the first ever Eurovision Asia Song Contest.

On Friday, the US made the rare decision to ground flights nationwide, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded. With planes barred from taking off, some travellers opted for long drives in rental cars while others were left waiting at terminals. Several airports ran out of tarmac to park planes. After four hours, US airspace was re-opened. But the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has warned it will take time to get back to normal.

Sean Duffy (1:39)

At 8.15 tonight, Eastern time, we've opened up the airspace. Now, does that mean every flight is going to fly right now?

It's going to be slow. Check with your airline. It depends on, do we have crews available? Do we have pilots and flight attendants available to fly your flight? We're going to try to move as many of those as we can tonight if we have the capacity with crews to move those flights. If not, we're going to start tomorrow morning with our airline partners moving those aircraft. But it's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon.

Ankur Desai (2:13)

Flights were grounded because the air traffic control system became overloaded and caused communication issues. The White House said that there's zero evidence of a cyber attack. Sean Duffy blamed old hardware and appealed for more funding to overhaul the current system.

Sean Duffy (2:30)

Give us the resources to build a state-of-the-art air traffic control system. Let's not do a patchwork, a fix to a system that's critical for every single family. It's not red, it's not blue, it's not Democrat, it's not Republican. It's American.

Let's get the money, let's invest so we never have to come at 8.3 at night and have a press conference on why air travel was shut down, why we have tens of thousands of people in airports separated from their families without any knowledge of where they're going to sleep tonight.

Ankur Desai (3:02)

One of those stranded passengers was our correspondent, Sumi Somerskanda. She spoke to me from Denver International Airport when the ground stop was lifted.

Sumi Somaskanda (3:12)

We are very happy to hear that news. We had actually already rebooked our flights ourselves to go back to Washington, DC the next day, so we will be staying put for the evening. But I've already seen now here at Denver International Airport, some passengers dashing away with their suitcases. So they are presumably hoping to get on a flight here. So they have seen this news as well that this ground stop has been lifted.

We of course know that it's going to take quite some time here on the ground in Denver and certainly right across the country to unpick some of what has happened. Because there is a long line, I can tell you, right behind me at the moment of passengers who are waiting to rebook their flights, trying to figure out if they can get out of Denver tonight or in the coming days. But certainly, you know, people remain pretty calm here in Denver all evening. You're now starting to see people trying to figure out what they can do and how to continue on their flight or perhaps reschedule for another day.

Ankur Desai (4:08)

And so this is going to be a real test of not just the airports, but the airlines, everybody working within that industry, because Sean Duffy, as we've been hearing in the last hour or so, he's been asking for $50 billion worth to overhaul the air traffic system. It's going to be a real challenge over the next few hours, but also going forward for the United States airspace control as a whole.