Biden orders Transportation Sec. Buttigieg to conduct FULL probe into nationwide flight grounding
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Biden orders Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation to conduct a FULL investigation into the grounding of flights across the country, just weeks after the Southwest Airlines debacle
- The president told reporters that he has been in direct contact with Pete Buttigieg.
- The Secretary of Transportation, in turn, has been working with FAA officials.
- Thousands of flights across the country are grounded or delayed this morning
- A cyberattack is likely not behind the outage, the White House has said
President Joe Biden is calling on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to launch a full investigation into a disruption that forced flights across the United States to be canceled or delayed Wednesday morning.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had asked all airlines to temporarily suspend domestic ground flights until 9 a.m. ET as officials frantically search for what caused a system outage. security key.
Biden told reporters Wednesday morning that he has already been in contact with Buttigieg and indicated that he would keep a close eye on the developing matter.
“I told them to let me know directly when they find out,” the president said shortly before 8 a.m. ET.
‘Planes can still land safely, but not take off at this time. They don’t know what the cause is, they hope that in a couple of hours they will have a good idea of what caused it and they will respond then.
President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday morning that he has already been in contact with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
It comes just over a week after the Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Southwest Airlines for its extensive cancellation of flights over the Christmas holidays.
Buttigieg issued his own statement an hour earlier announcing that he was working with FAA officials to investigate.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is working with FAA officials to determine what caused the outage.
“I have contacted the FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots,” the Transportation Secretary said.
“FAA is working to quickly and safely resolve this issue so 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 agency announced at 6:30 am on Wednesday that its Air Mission Warning system was not working properly.
“Alerts pilots to runway closures, equipment outages, and other potential hazards along a flight path or at a location that could affect flight,” according to the FAA.
As of now, its National Airspace System operations remain “limited” and the Air Mission Notice system has yet to be fully restored.
There is currently no evidence that a cyberattack caused the outage, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
In this file photo taken on December 28, 2022, a screen shows canceled flights in the Southwest Airlines baggage area at Los Angeles International Airport. The airline holiday travel crash occurred just before the blackout this morning.
However, he said that Biden ordered the Department of Transportation to launch a “full investigation into the causes.”
The new air travel crisis comes on the heels of Southwest Airlines’ holiday season collapse, which led to the cancellation of approximately 16,000 company flights between December 21 and 31.
Scenes of long lines at the airport and stranded passengers sleeping in chairs or canceling plans to see family lent a somber tone to the first largely COVID-19-restricted holiday season since 2019.
Buttigieg warned Southwest late in the crisis that his department “would use the fullest extent of its investigative and enforcement powers to hold Southwest accountable if it fails to deliver on promises made to reimburse passengers.”