A nationwide halt to US flights and a widespread Microsoft outage have raised concerns among travelers about the reliability of interconnected technology systems. Although some passengers questioned whether cyberattacks were responsible, both the Federal Aviation Administration and Microsoft said they found no signs of malicious activity behind the disruptions.
Administration officials said an upgrade to the air traffic control system overwhelmed aging equipment, producing intermittent failures in communications and radar coverage. The resulting ground stop lasted more than four hours on Friday. Travel conditions were improving by Saturday morning, and FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said airline schedules were expected to return to normal by late Sunday.
Microsoft said Saturday that its services had been completely restored. The company attributed the outage to a problem introduced during an earlier expansion of network capacity that emerged after a subsequent network change. The disruption to email and other computer services is believed to have affected many millions of people worldwide.
For passengers scrambling to rearrange journeys, the combination of failures brought anxiety and uncertainty. Maxine Gustafson, a 34-year-old physician assistant from Minneapolis, was waiting for a rental car at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on Friday so she and colleagues could return from work training. She described feeling frightened and powerless. “It makes you think, like, is this a cyberattack?” she said.
At Newark Liberty International Airport, Chuck Amasio, 68, of Rahway, New Jersey, returned Saturday after a canceled flight forced him to spend the night in a hotel. He said the disruptions made him think about how attacks on airspace or electricity networks could damage an economy. Other travelers expressed uncertainty about the explanations they were hearing. Tori Perkins, 34, who spent Friday night at San Diego International Airport during a trip from Hawaii to Florida, said conflicting accounts made it difficult to know what was true.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appealed Friday for tens of billions of dollars in additional funding to modernize air traffic control. An overhaul that began last year, following congressional approval of $12.5 billion, has already replaced thousands of copper wire connections with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems. The White House has sought another $30 billion to finish the work.
Some stranded passengers described a cooperative atmosphere despite the delays. Corbyn Wascher, a 37-year-old high school teacher returning to Moline, Illinois, from an education conference in Miami, spent four hours on the tarmac in Charlotte. He said passengers remained cordial and praised American Airlines staff for distributing water and snacks while working under visible stress.
Back in Newark, Caroline Ruiz rested near a heating vent after the first flight of her 24-hour journey to Australia was canceled. Hoping to depart later Saturday, she noted that technology had disrupted two consecutive days, although the Microsoft outage had also given her an unexpected break from work.
