A technology upgrade overloaded antiquated equipment on Friday afternoon, prompting U.S. authorities to order every plane across the country to land immediately.
The nationwide ground stop lasted for more than four hours, causing widespread travel disruptions. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Microsoft faced technological failures that left millions of workers and travelers stranded globally.
Stephen King posted on social media that the aliens had landed and that was the real reason for the ground stop, while travelers questioned whether the chaos was the result of a coordinated cyberattack.
“It makes you think, like, is this a cyberattack? We don’t have control over a lot of this stuff.”
said Maxine Gustafson, a 34-year-old physician assistant from Minneapolis, who spoke while waiting in line for a rental car at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
Administration officials attributed the aviation crisis to a technology upgrade on the nation’s air traffic control system that overwhelmed aging equipment. This generated intermittent communications and radar gaps across the network.
By Saturday morning, air traffic operations began to smooth out. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that airline schedules should return to normal by late Sunday.
Microsoft reported on Saturday that its services were fully restored. The tech giant explained that an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade surfaced following a recent network change.
The incident renewed urgency around funding requests for aging federal infrastructure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pushed for tens of billions in additional funding to modernize the country’s air traffic system.
Congress previously approved $12.5 billion in funding, which the FAA used to replace thousands of copper wire connections with fiber optic lines and upgrade hundreds of radio systems. The White House is currently seeking an additional $30 billion to finish the overhaul.
Travelers faced varying conditions across regional hubs on Saturday. At San Diego International Airport, Tori Perkins encountered routine crowds despite lingering cancellations.
“It’s one of those things where I don’t necessarily believe what the government says. I don’t know what’s true because there are so many people saying different things.”
said Perkins, who spent Friday night at the airport during a layover.
Both the FAA and Microsoft confirmed there were no signs of malicious activity behind the simultaneous system failures.
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