WASHINGTON, November 14. /TASS/. The malfunction in US air traffic control equipment will not be resolved anytime soon, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters.
According to him, as of now, it is hardly possible to estimate the timeline for the potential restoration of air services. Mullin noted that the priority is ensuring that planes in the air can land safely. He added that he has no clear information about how long this situation might last.
Mullin emphasized that the causes of the outage are still unknown, but pointed out "this isn’t the same comparison to 9/11," referring to the 2001 series of terrorist attacks in the country that killed 2,977 people. "There is no indication - and we had no reason to believe that - as of right now, that this was a threat to the US," Mullin said. He also stressed that the outage was not caused by a failure in Microsoft's services, though he added that there may be a connection. He also noted that US President Donald Trump has been briefed on the incident.
In turn, the FBI also emphasized that the malfunction in air traffic control equipment was not caused by a cyberattack or any criminal activity. It is investigating whether the malfunction is related to a software update.
Earlier, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended flights due to equipment problems at all 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers across the country. The FAA has launched an investigation into the malfunctions. This is the first nationwide flight suspension since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. A similar suspension occurred after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The US government began working to modernize the outdated equipment of air traffic controllers after Congress allocated $12.5 billion for this purpose last year.