WH on FAA System Outage: ‘We Do Not Have Evidence That This Outage Was Caused by a Cyber Attack’
(CNSNews.com) – There is no evidence to suggest that Wednesday’s FAA system outage, which led to nationwide air traffic being halted, was the result of a cyber attack, the White House said Wednesday.
“With respect to the FAA system outage that occurred early this morning, the safety of Americans is the top priority of the president, the Department of Transportation, and the FAA. DOT and FAA report that yesterday, they were working through issues in the NOTAM system, which is used to communicate key safety information about runways and flight patterns with pilots,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
“To be clear, we’re not talking about air traffic control here, but we still consider this to be a vital safety system as well. So FAA staff continue to work through the night to resolve the outage and issued a ground stop at 7:45 am this morning, which lasted for approximately 90 minutes. FAA lifted the ground stop once the TAMS system was available again, which means that the critical safety information required to resume travel was available,” she said.
“The president was briefed this morning by Secretary Buttigieg before for Walter Reed with the first lady as you heard directly from the president on the South Lawn this morning. As we shared this morning as well, we do not have evidence that this outage was caused by a cyber attack. The FAA is working aggressively to get to the bottom of the root causes for the system outage so it does not happen again,” the press secretary added.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, flights were grounded around 6:30 am and resumed around 8:50 am.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted Wednesday morning: “FAA has determined that the safety system affected by the overnight outage is fully restored, and the nationwide ground stop will be lifted effective immediately. I have directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.”
“Does President Biden have confidence in Transportation Secretary Buttigieg?” Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked.
JEAN-PIERRE: Yes.
DOOCY: Why?
PIERRE: Because Secretary Buttigieg is a – he respects the secretary and the work that he has been doing. You have seen the secretary on TV. You’ve probably spoken to him yourself, and they are doing everything that they can to make sure that the experience that Americans have is a good one. That’s why they’ve held the airlines accountable. You’ve seen the secretary do that over and over again, and we understand.
We understand what Americans have been going through these past couple of months. That’s why the secretary has been very clear on making sure that they are held accountable, has put in processes in place to make sure that that occurs, and yes, the president has confidence in Secretary Buttigieg.
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