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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called Wednesday morning’s nationwide flight outage a ‘data point’ to learn from as Republicans demand answers about back-to-back airline crises.
He also told MSNBC that flights were grounded or delayed ‘out of an abundance of caution’ while a glitch in a key Federal Aviation Administration safety feature was resolved.
The Biden official also said he did not believe the origin of the outage was ‘nefarious.’
‘This gives us a really important data point at a really important moment to understand what we’re going to need moving forward,’ Buttigieg told reporters today.
In his MSNBC interview, Buttigieg conceded that ‘glitches’ such as these happen but vowed his department would be investigating the matter.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg vowed that his department was investigating the outage that forced the FAA to ground and delay flights
‘The most important thing I want passengers to know is my number one priority is safety,’ Buttigieg said.
‘We need to understand whether this reflects a systemic issue, and what would be required so that there’s no single point of failure here.’
He added, ‘This is an incredibly complex system, so glitches and complications happen all the time, but we can’t allow them to ever lead to this level of disruption and we won’t ever allow them to lead to a safety problem.’
Meanwhile Republican lawmakers were quick to call out the Biden administration for the back-to-back issues.
‘ALL domestic flights are grounded for the 1st time since 9/11. It’s just one transportation crisis after another under Biden,’ GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York wrote on Twitter before the flights resumed on Wednesday morning.
Cancelled flights are seen on the billboard at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington D.C., United States on January 11, 2023
Passengers at Miami International Airport on Wednesday after the system failure halted all flights for several hours and delayed 5,000 planes across the United States
‘Instead of worrying about racist roads & gas-powered cars, he should focus on REAL transportation & cyber security upgrades.’
GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson signaled to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday that an investigation by lawmakers was warranted.
‘Shame on Congress if we don’t ask the right questions,’ Johnson said.
Washington Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, signaled on CNN’s morning show that Congress would need to examine whether updates were critically needed at the FAA.
‘I think the situation begs the question about the current state of the technology infrastructure at the FAA,’ Larsen said. ‘Members of Congress will want to see the results of that after action report.’
President Joe Biden called on Buttigieg to launch a full investigation into the outage on Wednesday morning.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had asked all airlines to temporarily hold domestic flights on the ground until 9 a.m. ET as officials frantically search for what led to the disruption of a key safety system.
President Joe Biden told reporters early on Wednesday that he’s already been in contact with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
Biden told reporters early on Wednesday that he’d already been in contact with Buttigieg and indicated he would be keeping a close eye on the developing matter.
‘I told them to report directly to me when they find out,’ the president said shortly before 8 a.m. ET.
‘Aircraft can still land safely, just not take off right now. They don’t know what the cause of it is, they expect in a couple of hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time.’
It comes a little over a week after the Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Southwest Airlines for its broad cancellation of flights over the Christmas holiday.
Buttigieg released his own statement an hour earlier announcing that he was working with FAA officials to investigate.
‘I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots,’ the Transportation Secretary said.
‘FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.’
All flights currently in the sky are safe to land, according to the FAA.
The body announced at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday that its Notice to Air Missions system was not operating properly.
It ‘alerts pilots about closed runways, equipment outages, and other potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight,’ according to the FAA.
As of now, its National Airspace System operations remain ‘limited’ with the Notice to Air Missions system still not fully restored.
People wait at the Denver International Airport, as flights were grounded after FAA system outage in Denver, Colorado, U.S., January 11, 2023
In this file photo taken on December 28, 2022, a display shows cancaled flights in the Southwest Airlines luggage area at Los Angeles International Airport. The airline’s holiday travel meltdown happened just before this morning’s outage
There’s currently no evidence that a cyberattack caused the outage, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
However, she said Biden ordered the Transportation Department to launch a ‘full investigation into the causes.’
Buttigieg echoed her doubts about a cyberattack on CNN today but added he was ‘not going to rule that out until we have a clear understanding.’
The new air travel crisis comes hot on the heels of Southwest Airlines’ holiday season meltdown, which led to roughly 16,000 of the company’s flights being canceled between December 21 and December 31.
Scenes of long airport lines and stranded passengers sleeping on chairs or canceling plans to see family altogether gave a grim undertone to the first holiday season largely without COVID-19 restrictions since 2019.
Buttigieg warned Southwest at the tail end of the crisis that his department would ‘use the fullest extent of its investigative and enforcement powers to hold Southwest accountable if it fails to adhere to the promises made to reimburse passengers.’
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