FAA System Outage Grounded All Flights. Luckily Our DOT Sec. Was Chosen Based On Identity Politics

I’m sure Americans are SO GRATEFUL right now that the Biden Administration appointed a Secretary of Transportation based on sexual identity politics, whose qualifications include considering Ticket to Ride “among his favorite board games.” He’s JUST the guy we need to address our racist highways!

But I’m curious, what is he doing for the massive transportation disaster currently that is disrupting transportation across the nation? After a huge transportation disaster over the holidays with thousands of cancelled flights, the airports are once again in total chaos. This time, it’s because of an FAA “system outage,” which grounded thousands of flights. Without this system, which provides notices to pilots in planes before takeoff, planes cannot be allowed to fly out of airports. And if planes can’t fly out, planes can’t fly in. CNN reports “more than 9,000 flights” delay as of Wednesday afternoon, with 1,300 flights cancelled entirely.

Apparently, air traffic control officials discovered a computer issue Tuesday afternoon and decided they’d reboot the whole system early Wednesday during the slowest air travel time, which means 90 minutes with the main system offline. Ah, the good ol’ “try turning it off” approach. Age old, really. But that outage led to a massive transportation disaster with thousands of grounded flights and tens of thousands of stranded travelers.

According to CNN,

“Officials ultimately found a corrupt file in the main Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, the source said. A corrupt file was also found in the backup system.”

Paternity Pete Buttigieg says there is “no direct evidence or indication” that this might be a cyberattack, but I trust him about as far as I can throw him. I don’t trust that he’d know, nor do I trust that he’d tell us the truth about it. Sources offered a different possibility, saying that “aging infrastructure” is to blame.

“Because of budgetary concerns and flexibility of budget, this tech refresh has been pushed off. I assume now they’re going to actually find money to do it.”

I suspect a little money can be pulled from Paternity Pete’s budget to overhaul racist highways.

Meanwhile, here are the priorities over at the FAA right now.