America's airspace, one of the world's busiest and largest aviation networks, suddenly fell into deep crisis on Friday. Flight operations at airports across America came to a complete halt for hours, causing huge inconvenience to millions of passengers traveling within the country and abroad. Due to a sudden serious technical glitch in the communication system, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was forced to ground flight across the country. Due to this major technical glitch, thousands of flights were either canceled or delayed for a long time. This is the second major incident in American history after the September 11, 2001 attacks when aviation services across the country had to be stopped in this manner. Let us know in detail how this crisis arose in the American skies, what were the main reasons behind it and what effect it has had on passengers and aviation infrastructure. Due to communication failure, 'ground stop' had to be imposed across the country, 15 lakh passengers were affected. This entire technical problem started at around 3:36 pm on Friday afternoon, according to Eastern Time. The FAA suddenly experienced severe telecommunications disruptions at air traffic control facilities and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) centers across the country. The technical outage hit several US air route traffic control centers, including 22 regional facilities that direct aircraft between airports. Due to the safety and potential risks to passengers, the FAA immediately took precautionary measures and ordered a ground stop across the country. However, the saving grace was that the aircraft which were already in the air at the time of the incident were allowed to proceed safely towards their destination, but the take-off of new aircraft was completely banned for more than four hours. Around 15 lakh passengers were directly affected due to this nationwide shutdown. According to the data, more than 10,000 flights were either delayed or cancelled, while hundreds of aircraft were diverted to other safe airports. Old routers and copper lines of the 1980s became the real cause of the crisis. After this massive disruption, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued an official statement unveiling the reasons for this entire incident. He clarified that there was no cyber attack or external conspiracy behind this crisis, but it was entirely the result of the failure of the country's aging aviation infrastructure and technical equipment. Sean Duffy reveals that the US air traffic control system is still using very old switches, routers and short copper lines from the 1980s. These old and outdated communications devices were overloaded with data, causing them to send inaccurate or inconsistent information to air traffic controllers. The Transport Secretary also said in a warning tone that unless the country's old aviation infrastructure is completely modernized and repaired, such technical glitches may resurface in the future. He has sought $50 billion of emergency funding to modernize infrastructure. How were the planes in the air handled and what were the emergency rules When the FAA ordered a ground stop across the country, there were more than 3,500 planes in the air in US airspace. In such a situation, the question arises that how was the safety of these planes in the sky ensured? Officials clarified that the ground stop rule mainly applies to grounded and flying aircraft. The aircraft in the air were handled safely by air traffic controllers with the help of available communication and radar systems. During this, the pilots and controllers followed the prescribed emergency procedures. Even if an aircraft's two-way radio communication with air traffic control is broken, there are strict rules for that too. In such a situation, pilots use a special transponder code '7600', through which the ground staff gets information about communication failure. After this, the pilots land the aircraft at the nearest or safe airport following the rules of Visual or Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). By 8 pm, the number of planes in the air in American airspace had dropped to less than 400. Impact seen on American airlines and airports, what will be the future situation. Due to this technical disruption, there was huge chaos at almost all the major airports of America. At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the situation became such that there was less space to park the diverted planes, after which more flights had to be banned there. Major airlines like JetBlue, United Airlines and American Airlines advised passengers to check the status of their flights in advance. JetBlue even had to cancel its remaining domestic flights for Friday. Even after the FAA lifted nationwide restrictions at 8:15 p.m., the situation is taking time to fully return to normal. The biggest challenge before the airlines is to arrange the stranded planes and crew back on their scheduled routes due to canceled flights and route changes. Experts believe that passengers may have to face some problems till this weekend. However, this major incident has once again highlighted to the world the need for security and modernization of aviation infrastructure at a global level.
