Microsoft says services restored as officials report no signs of malicious activity
Public readings of the week’s troubles diverged widely. One line of discussion pointed to the Silicon Valley fallout from talk of an AI billionaire’s infidelity, including with an alleged Chinese spy. Another pointed to the Microsoft outage that, depending on how it was viewed, either cast millions of frustrated workers adrift or spared them from a daily avalanche of electronic messages.
By Friday afternoon, when U.S. authorities suddenly ordered every plane across the country to land immediately, many people concluded that something was up and something was broken.
The official explanations for the thousands of downed jetliners and hours of email and other computer troubles were more mundane: a technology upgrade on the nation’s air traffic control system had overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, administration officials said, leading to the ground stop that lasted more than four hours.
By Saturday morning, air travel was already smoother, and Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said airline schedules should be back to normal by late Sunday.
Microsoft, for its part, said Saturday that its services had been fully restored, saying the problem “was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced” following a recent network change. The outage is believed to have affected many millions of people around the world. Both the FAA and Microsoft said there were no signs that malicious activity had been behind the troubles.
Other events on Friday added to the sense of an unusual week: a cruise ship overturned in New Orleans when a tanker slammed into it, suspicious drones were reported over a U.S. air base in Britain, and a bomb was found near an ethanol plant in Ohio. Stephen King, the novelist who has written about American fears for generations, offered his own explanation of the ground stop in a Friday afternoon tweet.
“The aliens have landed,” King wrote. “That’s the REAL reason for the ground stop. They don’t want to start a worldwide panic.”
Chuck Amasio, a 68-year-old from Rahway, New Jersey, was trying to fly out of Newark Liberty International Airport when his canceled flight led to a few beers with his brother in an airport bar and eventually a night in a hotel. Saturday morning, he was back at the airport to try again. “There’s a lot of weird stuff going on,” Amasio said. “It makes one think.” His first thought was dark: “We talk about how wars aren’t done with bombs anymore. They shut down airspace or a power grid. They can cripple an economy.”
Maxine Gustafson, a 34-year-old physician assistant from Minneapolis, was in line to pick up a hastily booked rental car at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on Friday afternoon so she and colleagues could get home from a work training. Gustafson said the week’s mishaps made her feel afraid and helpless. “It makes you think, like, is this a cyberattack?” she said. “We don’t have control over a lot of this stuff.”
Tori Perkins, 34, was hoping for a Saturday flight at Terminal 2 at San Diego International Airport, where 11 of the 62 flights already were listed as canceled that morning and the same number were delayed. Crowds were normal. Perkins, who lives in Hawaii, was in San Diego on a layover on her way to see family in Florida, and she spent Friday night at the airport.
“It’s one of those things where I don’t necessarily believe what the government says,” said Perkins. “I don’t know what’s true because there are so many people saying different things.” She was not surprised that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy had made a plea Friday for tens of billions in more funding to upgrade the country’s air traffic system. “It sounds like more of the same,” she said.
The FAA has already replaced thousands of copper wire connections with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding. The White House has been pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.
Corbyn Wascher was stuck on the tarmac at Charlotte Douglas International Airport for four hours while heading back to Moline, Illinois, from Miami, where he had been at an education conference. He said everyone was cordial on the plane, talking to one another and stretching their legs. He said he was impressed with the American Airlines staff, who handed out water, pretzels and biscotti snacks. “The stewardesses were amazing,” said the 37-year-old high school teacher.
Back at the Newark airport, Caroline Ruiz had caught a few hours of sleep by a heating vent. She wasn’t sure what time it was as she waited for someone to bring her a meal she was promised after the cancellation of the first leg of her 24-hour trip to Australia. She hoped to get started later Saturday. It was two days in a row, she noted, where she had been betrayed by technology. Though maybe one of those days didn’t count as a betrayal. “I kind of got a free day yesterday” because the Microsoft systems were down.
Associated Press journalists Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Ali Swenson in Chicago, Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Aron Ranen in Newark contributed to this report.