By The FirstA “system failure” early Wednesday morning grounded all domestic flights in America, causing travel chaos for millions of passengers from coast to coast.
“The President has been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation this morning on the FAA system outage,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted before 7:40 a.m. ET. “There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT [Department of Transportation] to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates.”
The FAA paused all domestic departures until 9 AM ET “to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information,” the agency’s latest update said.
Biden addressed the issue Wednesday morning.
“I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes,” Biden said. “I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is.”