DHS secretary says no threat to U.S. as FAA grounds all flights

Officials cite a telecom outage and give no timeline for restoring flights

The FAA issued a total ground stop on Friday afternoon, grounding flights across the country and leaving travelers stranded in airports and sitting on runways. There were very few details about why Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the call. The only information given at the time was that the stoppage was being attributed to communication difficulties.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin came out to brief reporters just outside the White House and started off by saying that there is not a threat to the U.S. and that officials believe the whole situation boils down to a telecommunications issue.

Mullin addressed the calls officials were fielding about whether the ground stop was an attack. “We’re getting a ton of calls saying, is this a terrorist attack? Is this a terrorist attack? Everybody’s safe. There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones, if they’re flying or anything like that. I just want to make sure everybody’s at ease about that,” Mullin said.

Mullin was careful about the limits of what officials knew. “There was no prior indication. There was no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us. It is just a telecommunication outage as of right now,” he said.

Reporters pressed him on that wording — “as of yet” — and Mullin said officials are not ruling out anything. They are still looking into the details and are not at a point where they can rule anything out, which is why he used that phrasing. He was very emphatic, multiple times, that this was not a 9/11 situation.

Mullin said that all flights are accounted for. “Out of abundance of caution, we have grounded all the flights, and all the flights are accounted for. As incoming flights, either internationally or the flights that are currently still in the air - we’ll be dealing with those case by case,” he said.

The secretary also said he does not think this is affecting other countries. He added that there are two places in the U.S. that were not affected by the communications outage, but he could not quite share more details about them — part of what underscored that a lot of information was still coming in. Host Sacha Pfeiffer noted it was not yet clear whether Mullin meant the continental U.S. or otherwise.

On next steps, Mullin said the first thing officials are working on is restoring communications to the full extent and making sure all flights are on the ground. No specific timeline was given. Asked whether the process would be a matter of hours, whether people would be stuck on tarmacs, and whether it would take days or months, Mullin did not have an exact answer, saying only that it is going to take some time and that this isn’t going to be turned around within the hour.

The FAA rolled out an AI air traffic tool nationwide earlier this week, and the tool is built to help assist with air traffic management. It was piloted in Washington, D.C., in September, and then applied nationwide this week. Mullin said that at this stage, officials don’t think the outage today is connected to that AI system. Asked about a Microsoft outage that happened the previous day and whether there was any possible connection, Mullin said he didn’t see any reason to connect the two situations.

President Trump has been briefed, but NPR had not heard from him. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been speaking with the president and the State Department, and Duffy called the situation unprecedented. Trump is expected to stay in Washington this weekend, with no imminent travel, but he is planning to depart Monday for Asia, where he will visit the Philippines and China for two summits.

NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, who listened to Mullin’s briefing, reported that officials were still able to communicate with certain planes that are in the air, and that the process of getting everybody on the ground is complicated. Shivaram said the specific communications elements involved remain unclear and are being described broadly as a widespread telecommunications issue. She reported that no guidance had been issued on whether grounded flights could depart, and that Mullin did not have an exact answer on how long the ground stop would last. Shivaram described the handling of incoming international flights as a case-by-case basis while officials work on getting all flights grounded.