Nationwide Ground Stop Lifted by FAA After 4+ Hours

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0:49No haggling. No hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. And you have been listening to the White House press briefing not usually held on a Friday night but what was warranted by this of course is that nationwide ground stop that has been in place for hours this afternoon canceling thousands of flights leaving thousands of passengers across the nation stranded and those were the two federal officials taking questions on this transportation secretary Sean Duffy and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen.

1:26Duffy argued that this is a quote legacy system problem, legacy system problem that took place, which is what caused many people who are still stuck on planes right now watching that briefing to get stuck on those planes. They say there was zero evidence so far, though they are still investigating, that a cyber attack caused this and said that no nefarious actors have taken credit for that. They said that there is also no evidence it is tied to that Microsoft outage that was in place for hours yesterday as well. Instead, you heard those two federal officials calling for more funding from Congress to fix the nation's air traffic control system.

2:02CNN's Pete Muntean is with me now. And Pete, obviously, we saw right before these officials came out, they lifted the ground stop. What's behind the FAA's decision there? And what stood out to you from what you heard from Secretary Duffy and Secretary Mark-Wayne Mullen? A lot of new information there from the Secretary's. 3 ,500 planes in the air when this ground stop went into place at 3.54 p.m. Eastern time ended at 8.19 p.m. Eastern time. Total time, four hours and 25 minutes, though we are not out of the woods yet. The latest data from FlightAware is that there have been 9 ,000 flight delays in the U.S., 6 ,000 flight cancellations, about 11 ,000 flights were left to be operated by airlines at the time that this ground stop went into place, meaning that one and a half million air passengers were stranded by this unprecedented move because of a problem with a system called Time Delay Multiplexing, or TDM.

3:05It is an old school copper wire telecommunication system that is the backbone of the national airspace system. It's responsible for essentially squeezing signals into one line. carries signals such as ground-to-ground communication, so air traffic control facility landline to air traffic control facility landline. Ground-to-air communication, meaning carrying the signals from an air traffic control facility to a broadcast tower, which then transmits the radio voice to pilots. And then it's also responsible for signals such as the radar communication that air traffic controllers see on their scopes in front of them.

3:50So without this system, they were essentially operating blind and deaf. Duffy says that this system started to experience what he calls instability at about 3.36 p.m. Eastern time. And that's what led the FAA to put into place this nationwide ground stop. He said we could not risk it, essentially, to keep planes flying when this system was unstable. Mark Wayne Mullen, the DHS secretary, said this is not a cyber attack, seems to be a hardware-related issue. There are some still big questions about why this precipitated with this system. We know that it has been a problem before. There was the Newark outages that caused roving, rolling blackouts of radar and radio back in 2025.

4:42that caused some controllers to take what's called trauma leave and left that facility woefully short-staffed for a long period of time. We will see, though, if Duffy and Mullen get their way here. They essentially use this incident to grandstand and put Congress on blast for even more money for a Trump administration priority, what's called BNAT, a brand new air traffic control system. Before today, I just talked to Secretary Duffy on Monday, the ask was for$30 billion in more funding for air traffic control system and overhauls of infrastructure. Now the ask is$50 billion in emergency funding.

5:26That is the new number just out from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We will see if this Congress does ultimately give that to the Trump administration. He says that Congress has given the Trump administration$12.5 billion, but Duffy calls that simply a down payment to get to where they need to go. The FAA has been scrambling to replace copper wire that is central to this system with IP systems using fiber cables, something that you're familiar with using modern day cable internet. Previous is more akin to dial-up or maybe T1 lines. So they're trying to bring things into the new century here, although it is a really hard thing to do for the Federal Aviation Administration.

6:13It's a poor metaphor, but it's an apt one. It's like trying to fix the plane while flying it at the same time. And it's why Congress has said the FAA really needs to pump the brakes on new things like its AI system that just did a nationwide rollout this week for more efficient flight routes. That does not seem to be at play here. That does not seem to be to blame. That's more of a back end thing. Although those in the know have pointed out that when you introduce a new thing into the FAA patchwork of systems that is often very old, that can introduce failure. So there's some big questions to ask here as we dig into exactly what went wrong here.

6:51Yeah, I mean, and it's led to this total dumpster fire that is now playing out across the nation's airports. Meltdown. Pete, to put in a technical term, I mean, the Secretary of Transportation was calling this a national emergency. and talking about that funding, you know, some reporters pointed out inside the room, Republicans have controlled Congress for the last two years with a Republican president as he's been seeking that money. And he's obviously made clear before that he feels that they need more money. But I just think in terms of, you know, where this is going in the next couple of hours, Pete, with this lifted, Sean Duffy himself did not seem to know how quickly all of this could be resolved.

7:27I mean, one timeline he had offered was that they would be fully back by Thanksgiving in two weeks from now. Yeah, I heard that too. And I thought that was a particularly pessimistic outlook on how this will go down. I think airlines will be somewhat back to normal tomorrow, although we are seeing the cancellations begin to pile up already for tomorrow and the delays for tomorrow. Airlines essentially need to unplug their systems and plug it back in again because so many pilots have timed out now. They have hour restrictions imposed by the Department of Transportation. Crews are in the wrong spots.

8:01Airplanes are in the wrong spots. In some cases, there are no gates left at airports. Reagan National Airport, just outside of Washington, D.C., put out an alert through the FAA saying we can't accept any more diversions. No flights that weren't planned to be here should be here. So this will take some time for things to get essentially right-sized and back to normal. The best thing you can do right now is to communicate with your airline. I would say try to book on the first flight tomorrow. If you have a plan to get out tonight, you can probably kiss that goodbye. We know that JetBlue said they were going to operate no more flights tonight.

8:35That's a critical operator, albeit a smaller airline in the Northeast Corridor. We will see how things go for the larger airlines, the ones that are so predicated on the hub and spoke system. Some of those major hubs, like Newark for United, that is right sort of at the smack dab center of this. Chicago was heavily impacted. Atlanta, a huge hub for Delta. Charlotte, a huge hub for American Airlines. And DFW, also a huge hub for American Airlines. So we'll see sort of as this unfolds, we are not out of the woods yet. It will take some time for airlines to get back to normal, get people in places, sorry, people in planes in the right places as they continue to sort of grapple with the scope of this.

9:19They've been caught flat footed for hours now. Yeah, I'm sure everyone watching at airport bars across America appreciates your blunt assessment. Pete Muntean. Stay with me because I have a lot more questions for you about what came out of there. My colleague Kristen Holmes is also in the briefing room. Kristen, obviously these officials, it seemed like they've been waiting for the FAA to lift this ground stop because the briefing was expected to start around 8. They came out around 8.30. What stood out to you from what you heard and your questions to the secretaries? Well, there's still a number of questions that we didn't get answers to.

9:50One, just talking about and asking the question of should Americans feel safe to fly, we heard a number of different answers. One, we heard Secretary Duffy saying this is the safest system on earth. And two, he told me at a different point that there's going to be more of these outages, more of these system failures, and less Congress acts, and less Congress gives more money. And as Pete mentioned, I mean, they really did use this as an opportunity to try and hammer Congress for more money, to try and push this legislative, this legislature that they have been trying to get through. Now, of course, they've upped the ante once again.

10:22Secretary Terry Duffy, in the question that I had, after he had spoke for an enormous amount of time on how old they knew the system was, I asked why they weren't prepared for some sort of failure. Yes, they didn't have the money to put in new systems, but if they knew that the system was so fragile, why weren't they prepared? He essentially said that he couldn't anticipate every kind of catastrophic failure that was going to happen. But again, I mean, that is the government's job is to try and look ahead to potential failures and have backup plans in place. And the other question was after both of these officials spent a lot of time complimenting President Trump, saying he's a builder, saying he was best president of our time.

11:05And this was so important to him. I asked why we hadn't heard from President Trump. They said, well, they had heard from President Trump, but the American people have still not heard from from President Trump. He has not gone out there. He posted on True Social about a bipartisan piece of legislature about the Motion Picture Association. He talked about the rescue today in New Orleans when that ship was hit or that cruise was hit. But he has not commented on this at all. Now, these officials assured me and the reporters in the room and the American public, I assume, who is watching, that President Trump cares about this and that he is engaging in it.

11:41But we still haven't heard from the president when it comes to this five hour, nearly five hour nationwide outage, which the last time we saw something that even came close to this magnitude. Of course, we know there was one in 2023, but before that was 9-11, which had a lot of Americans deeply concerned today that this was some kind of cyber attack or attack or terrorist attack. And we still yet have not heard from the president. Yeah, and it seemed like Secretary Mullen was going out of his way to say people aren't in danger. They shouldn't be alarmed. This isn't the result of some cyber attack.

12:19It has no relation to the Microsoft outage that happened yesterday in terms of that argument. But to your point about the president himself not commenting on this, it was notable, I thought, the new chief of staff, who is less than a week into the job, Stephen Miller, was also in the room. It looked like on the periphery, right, Kristen? Yeah, he was right to my left. And I will note this comes after Stephen Miller kind of put out this memo early in the week, giving cabinet officials and the actual cabinet members more authority to speak on their various divisions. This was seen by many as a slight to the former chief of society, Susie Wiles, who controlled all of the messaging that came from any angle of the administration.

13:00Everything came through the White House. But instead, now you have these cabinet officials out there kind of following suit with this memo that Stephen Miller had put in place, saying that they are the best advocates of their own issues. But again, Caitlin, I do think in a situation like this where you're talking about a potential cyber threat, when you're talking about a nationwide outage that is affecting thousands, potentially millions of people, if we're looking at days and days of outages, generally speaking, people want to hear from the president of the United States when they're making those assurances of safety for the nation.

13:34Yeah. Kristen Holmes, glad to have you there in the briefing room asking those questions. Of course, we'll continue to monitor the response coming out of the White House and from the federal government. We're also watching how the reaction to this is playing out at airports. We're all watching. A lot of people are watching from airports and from planes themselves to get the updates on what is happening now that the F.A. has lifted this nationwide ground stop that was in place since about four o 'clock Eastern this afternoon. Very much still causing chaos, though, as the transportation secretary himself there was saying it will take time to get these planes back online in time.

14:09CNN's Nick Watt is at LAX for us tonight. Obviously, Nick, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people there. It's one of the busiest airports in the world. What are you seeing? Well, we have just heard, Caitlin, the first boarding announcement. But there was no whooping and hollering in the terminal because there's still a lot of work to be done to figure this out. This is the Southwest line. These people have been told if their flight wasn't canceled, they might get on a flight tonight. All the flights that are at the gates, they are going to try and get them in the air. But the issue, as Pete alluded to, some of the crews are going to be timing out.

14:46Now, this is the JetBlue line for the help desk. And that line, you can't even see it. It stretches, like, through the next terminal. I just saw one guy. Hey, man. You're mad as hell. And when's your flight going to take off? And when is it now? I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know. Good luck. So Sunday, he was saying, you know, I spoke to a guy earlier who said he got a four o 'clock flight tomorrow to JFK. And he was told by the desk agent that he was lucky that some people will be Sunday or Monday. In terms of how many people, by my bad math, Caitlin, in a four and a half hour period, that's how long the grand stop was, more than 20 ,000 people should have taken off from LAX.

15:37They didn't. So that is a huge backlog. My son is flying out tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. So far, he's been told, all roses, but we'll get here early. It's a Friday. It is impacting so many people trying to come home for the weekend or trying to go away for the weekend. It's going to take a while. As I say, no one's hooping and hollering here. There's still a lot of work to be done. Caitlin? Yeah, I mean, you can't help but feel that guy's pain there. You know, having a flight that was supposed to take off now, finding out it's going to take off two days later. And Nick, I don't know if you've heard the full briefing, but one thing that stood out was the transportation secretary was saying they've got to prioritize the people who are sitting on planes on tarmacs right now that have 80 or 100 people on board and getting them to a gate, which is a struggle because there are some airports, as Pete noted, where there is no gate.

16:23And so I just think if there's not even clarity coming from the government about how this is going to be sorted and when, I imagine these airlines are not offering a lot of guidance either. That's the thing. You know, you can't really blame the airlines because nobody really knew what was going on. We did have a few people getting a little bit frustrated. And in terms of the time, I mean, a friend of mine landed. They had to sit on the tarmac for about an hour until they could actually get a gate and they could get off. But, yeah, I mean, there was a lack of information for sure. But, again, the airlines didn't really know what was going on.

16:58I mean, they could have done a couple of things better, like the arrivals and departures boards up here. You know, they've been saying all the time, you know, was it X o 'clock? Now move to Y o 'clock. And, of course, that was just fiction. And that did irritate a few people. But listen, you know, look at these people that look. I mean, as I say, the line, I mean, I'm trying to jump and see the end of this line. It is way, way, way back there. They can also try and rebook on the app. People have been told, but some people have been struggling to get into that. So yeah, Sunday, Monday for some folks.

17:34Yeah, I mean, you can understand that frustration. And Secretary Duffy himself was saying, if I can blame the airline, if I can blame the weather, I would, he said. But this is the FAA that is in charge here handling all this. Nick Watt, tell everybody we're thinking of them, obviously, as they're sitting there waiting in that line. We'll check back in with you. My colleague, Julia Vargas-Jones, is also at Chicago O 'Hare International Airport, which is experiencing a ton of delays and seeing a lot of those similar scenes. And I wonder now that this ground stop has been lifted, it seems like it hasn't cleared up the chaos that is still in place inside these airports.

18:13It hasn't, Caitlin. And who knows how long it will take for that actually to be cleared up. This is just the area, the baggage claim area. This is not from arriving flights. This is most of the people here are gathering their luggage or looking for their luggage that had been put in the planes that they were supposed to board and then had to sit in that tarmac for various amounts of times. I want to show the other side of this. This is where people are getting their luggage. This is the line for people who haven't been able to find their luggage. I have never seen anything like this and I'll try to get through this as I'm telling you more of these updates But it is just so enormous and it's stretching through being basically the entire length of O 'Hare International Airport and these are some people that I'm starting to recognize Because I've seen them upstairs before when they were trying to check in and see if their play if their planes were still Maybe going to take off we know that some international flights have taken off But I've also spoken to a bunch of people I spoke to this couple who was coming here to Alabama actually to visit their daughter and They were just stuck here don't speak great English their daughter They said is who booked a hotel for them overnight because they couldn't get anything from the airline I spoke with another woman who was here in Chicago for work and she said she got the text from United that her flight had been canceled as she had just sat down and her Uber was already in the highway, so she didn't really have a chance to stop and get off.

19:56She's like, I'm going to go to the airport and see what happens. As she was talking to me, she saw on the board that her flight had been canceled. She was like, well, all right, I guess I have to stay in Chicago another night. Now, the overall demeanor of people here at Keatlin, I have to say, is that there's a little bit of people who are kind of upset and angry about the situation and how the airlines handled the communications with them. But overall, people are just saying that they're thankful that this is being treated in a safe way, in a safe way, in a safe manner. One woman told me, look, I would be pissed off at the airlines if I could.

20:34But at this point, I'm just happy to not be on the air when anything goes wrong. Yeah. Secretary Mullen was saying no lives were at risk, but they took this move out of an abundance of caution to keep those travelers safe. Julia Vargas Jones at Chicago here. We'll check back in with you. Hopefully those people will be able to get out of there and at least get some sleep tonight. I'm joined by CNN aviation analyst Miles O 'Brien as well as the former TSA administrator and former deputy director of the FBI John Pistol. And it's great to have both of you here. You're both experts on what we're seeing.

21:05And Miles, when you heard what the transportation secretary was saying there, obviously this is so rare to have a nationwide ground stop, which is why it freaked everyone out this afternoon when it went into place, given it's only happened, you know, 9-11 and then briefly in 2023. What did you make of what he said about the problem here, this aging system, trying to repair parts of it that led to what played out right now? Well, Caitlin, aviation is built all around this idea of redundancy. And we saw tonight how the layers of redundancy can, in fact, preserve safety. It failed safe because there were flight plans that pilots followed.

21:47There were backup communication systems. air traffic control performed heroically. All that happened. But somewhere in the system, there were software engineers who didn't necessarily have that ethos. The idea of putting on new software on a system that has little tiny copper wires running the information from center to center, obviously flooding and overwhelming the amount of bandwidth that those little wires have is kind of stunning to me. Clearly, the ATC system in the United States is a fixer-upper that is virtually condemned. But before you start working on that fixer-upper, you got to shore up the foundation.

22:33And don't you think before you start putting on new layers of software, you might want to replace those copper wires? And while it isn't the AI that they were talking about the other day specifically, there is a philosophical component to it. No one wants to come out and do a news conference to say, we're replacing copper with fiber. That's a ho-hum. Everybody wants to come out and say, we've got AI coming on board. Well, as I said before, that's like attaching a rocket to a horse and buggy, and that does not go well for the horse. Well, I mean, to that point, he was talking about that AI system they rolled out, and He was saying the new systems we put in place are working.

23:12It's the old systems that aren't, but obviously they're coinciding at the same time. You're saying that maybe instead of putting in the smart system, they should have addressed the other issue first, in your view. Shore up the foundation. Let's get let's get some fiber between these centers. Is that that big a deal? I mean, it seems to me that should be priority number one for the FAA. They have robust bandwidth and communication between their en route centers, their TRACONs, that's the radar systems around the airports, and the tower. All of that should be seamless before you start larding on any sort of new software.

23:48This is a system that is built on floppy disks, on paper, on copper wire. And to be thinking about AI or any fancy other software upgrades without addressing those fundamental issues is not in the spirit of aviation. It's not thinking about layers of redundancy at all. I mean, my jaw dropped earlier when Pete Muntean was saying that sometimes they go through to eBay to look for these old computer systems to get them because that's the ones that they're still using. Just to say how outdated this is. John Pistol, you heard from the DHS secretary as well. And he's out there because, I mean, I got a million texts this afternoon of people asking, is this a cyber attack?

24:29Is this related to Iran? Does this have anything to do with the major Microsoft outage we saw last week? Is it anything with NVIDIA's CEO resigning this week? He came out, he said they have no evidence there's a cyber attack, no evidence it's related to the Microsoft outage. From that perspective and how they monitor that, what does that investigation look like in these hours as this is underway? Well, it's great news if that's the case, Caitlin. And I say if that's the case, because my concern is that neither secretary indicated what caused that outage to happen at this precise time, at 3.54 p.m.

25:12Eastern Time today. And why might that not occur again the day before Thanksgiving or the Sunday after, which is one of the busiest travel days of the year, maybe 3 million people traveling? And so the concern is what was behind that? Did something trigger that? And have they ruled out completely that it was a cyber attack, as we saw last last week in Europe, with all with the uranium backed, believed to be on the refrigeration unit in stores and things, all those issues. So the fact that they have said it's this hardware, software and routers. My question is, why now did that happen versus yesterday at this time or tomorrow or again, a much heavier travel time?

25:57Because this is not the busiest travel day of the year. So a number of questions still to be answered, I would say. And then the confidence that people should have in terms of, is this going to happen when I'm traveling with holidays coming up? So many questions, given what we've seen, and so many bad actors that would have a reason to do something like this, whether they take credit, such as the Iranians probably would, but other bad actors might not and use this as an opportunity to say, okay, we're going to cause some economic harm to this country. because you have harmed us so much and fill in the blank on what that cause may be.

26:36So a number of issues. Good news is, again, the ground stop is lifted. But again, second time since 9-11. Wow. I'd like to have some more answers. Yeah, I think everybody would to that point. And, you know, Miles, the other thing the Transportation Secretary came out, I was a bit surprised at how much he was directly appealing to Congress during this, given the questions and answers that people still have this evening. This is what he said about a budget request as he was declaring what's playing out tonight a national emergency. He's asked the Congress on a bipartisan approach to say, give us the resources to build a state of the art air traffic control system.

27:19Let's not do a patchwork, a fix to a system that's critical for every single family. It's not red, it's not blue, it's not Democrat, it's not Republican. It's American. Give us the money to fix it. This is a continual problem that we have and it should be fixed. And so what we want to do, I've asked, the president's asked for$30 billion. I want$50 billion. He'd been saying$30 billion. He said there he wants$50 billion. I wonder what you made of that appeal in that press conference tonight as there's still so many questions to John's point. Yeah, it falls flat for me, given the fact that they've had two years of complete control of Congress.

28:03And it seems this administration, if it wants to build something, it just does it. So is it a fair shot at this time? And to play politics in this moment that way, I'm not sure that's the way to go. However, I will say this. There has been a lack of funding for modernization of the FAA. And this is that the buck has been passed from many administrations down the line. The other side of it, though, is the FAA has fumbled many opportunities to modernize. And frankly, this is an example of how they fumble. If they're going to try to put out a software push on copper wires on a busy Friday, are they really thinking it through?

28:43Maybe this should have been done in the wee hours of Sunday, for one thing. You talk about timing. So I think there's a lot of blame to go around here. It's time to get off the blame game and get serious about fixing something that is so crucial for this country. Miles O 'Brien, John Pistol, two of my favorite experts to have on. Thank you both for joining us after that press briefing from the White House. We are continuing to follow all the breaking news here. It's an extraordinary mess that is playing out for air travelers tonight. More than a million people have been stranded by these flight cancellations.

29:16We're going to go live to Newark International Airport and check in right after a quick break. Stay with us.

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30:07An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. And we're following major breaking news this hour as the FAA has lifted that nationwide ground stop for all domestic flights. An order that came after over four hours of uncertainty due to a massive communications outage that caused thousands of delays and cancellations at airports across the country. There's a ground stop nationwide.

30:54I advise you land your aircraft. Where would you like to land? Southwest 2179. Just a heads up. We went into a national ground stop all aircraft with update unknown. Why is there a ground stop? We are not aware of a reason. We just know it's indefinite and U.S.-wide. And it certainly was. It led to JetBlue and Air Canada calling off all remaining flights tonight, with the source telling my colleague Pete Muntean that other major airlines could shut down their operations as well. The Homeland Security Secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, as they just briefed reporters, says right now this does not appear to have been a cyber attack.

31:32They said nothing can be ruled out with 100 % certainty and they are still investigating. As for what triggered the meltdown, Secretary Mullen says it appears that some new technological patches that the FAA was installing overloaded the existing system as he was briefing reporters alongside the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tonight. CNN's Shimon Prokupes is on the ground. He's at Newark International Airport. Shimon, obviously, for the people there on the ground, I wonder what they thought of what they heard at the briefing and the answers they're getting, not just from the administration, but from the airlines about what is going to happen to them.

32:08Yeah, there's definitely now there's been a range of emotions. You know, some people were just resigned to the fact that they were going to have to spend the night still here in New Jersey. Many of them will live here. But in the last hour or so, literally, people have been running here to the airport and through the airport. But in terms of the operation, you could tell that they're not back at full level. In fact, many people here who have luggage like this, some of this that you can't just carry on, there's problems because what the airport staff here from United is saying is that the TSA is not fully running to check in bags and check them, security screen those bags.

32:44And so people who may have flights, let's say rebooked flights in an hour or so, They may not be able to get on those flights because they may not be able to get their bags screened. But we've been watching people here, Caitlin. This is the TSA clearance here. This is the automated clearance because many of the agents, the TSA agents, were sent home. I mean, there were announcements here that all the flights were being canceled. And so people went home. Staff went home. And now they're trying to slowly get people back to work. Some of the United Airlines employees have remained here. And they've been just patiently trying to help passengers get rebooked or try and find their flights.

33:22And just the joy you're seeing in some of the people. There was one woman here, Caitlin, who was in line. She they told her, oh, your next flight is at 6 a.m. And she was like, OK, great. She was just so happy with the idea that she's going to be able to get on her plane. But I've been talking to people here and, you know, there are some really tough stories. I mean, one man was telling me he was so angry because he was trying to make his way to Tampa for his grandmother's 90th birthday, which is tomorrow. He's not going to be able to make it. On a funnier story, I mean, people who are trying to get to bachelor parties, they can't do that.

33:57Entire groups of people. One person was trying to make their way to get to a wedding. And hopefully, you know, that up. You see, people, it's funny. Like, once the idea that maybe there's a flight here, we start to see people running. The big question for and the big concern now is luggage. How do people get their luggage through screening, the checked luggage? But, you know, people are coming in and let's see what happens here. But there are flights here that I looked on the board here after midnight that are expected to take off. So hopefully, slowly, as staff starts coming back, people will be able to get on their way and should hopefully help them to get to where they need to get to.

34:35I mean, you just got to feel for all of them and how frustrating this is. Shimon Prokupes, we'll keep checking in with you at Newark International Airport tonight. We're thinking of all those passengers who were there. I'm joined tonight by the former NTSB senior air safety investigator, Greg Feith, as well as the CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, Dave Soucy. And it's great to have both of you here. I mean, David, first off, can I just ask you about what we heard from Secretary Mullen and Secretary Duffy? Because they basically said that it is the upgrades that they are putting in place that caused this, that it basically overwhelmed the new part of the system was working, but it overwhelmed the old part of the system as how they explained it.

35:20As someone who helped lead the efforts to modernize the air traffic control system back in 1992 ahead of Y2K, What do you make of that explanation? Well, I think you have to be careful with something that's already fragile. You don't go in and start making changes. I remember New Year's Eve 1999 being nervous about the fact that we just put these changes in place. We had to find relays to put in physical hardware in place to add the digits we needed for the 2000. So 1999, New Year's Eve, we were all nervous about that. But we did it slowly. You do it slowly. You do it methodically, one piece at a time.

35:57It appears here that they didn't do that. They didn't take care. They upgraded too quickly and it caused overloads in different areas of the system. You just can't simply can't do that with a system that's already vulnerable. And David, on just on that front, I mean, how would that typically go about? I mean, when's the time to do it? Because I think, you know, one person emailed me just a few minutes ago and said they really decided to do this two weeks before Thanksgiving. You know, one of the busiest travel times of the entire year. Is there a good time to try to do this? it's not about timing it's about the place there's a good place to do it and there's areas you can do it with different uh impacts and those impacts can be contained so when we did the y2k deployment we did it in specific areas every single air traffic control tower had to be looked at then we did a test you can take them offline earlier in the program we talked about redundancy in these systems the systems do have safety redundancies those redundancies are what you test.

36:55You'd go to that place and you'd say, does that redundancy work? If it does, then you can talk about modifying the primary system. But each of those systems have to be analyzed and done at the right place at the right time. And this obviously was not the right place, nor the right time, nor the right scope. Greg, as you were watching this play out and you heard from the administration, their headlines coming out of that briefing tonight and what they said about this, what did it tell you about where this is and how quickly this is all going to be fixed? Caitlin, it's fixed right now. That doesn't guarantee that it'll stay fixed tomorrow.

37:32They've got the system up and running. The good thing is, is that the protocols when the system did go down, went into place. And that is pilots and controllers work together using alternate means to maintain the highest levels of operational safety. With TCAS, with ADS-B, the equipment on the airplane. The pilots are able to see other aircraft in the area. On guard frequency, they can talk to each other. And of course, they can relay information to the controllers or the controllers can actually relay information through a respective airline's dispatch who has direct communication with the airplane.

38:11So the backup to the backup system, as Dave was talking about, worked because we are all trained as pilots and as controllers to operate under these adverse circumstances. But by no means does this really mean that the system is fixed. And as David said, the biggest thing is, I mean, when you're going to roll something out and implement it, you got to do it, but you got to know the system and know that you're going to take a system down if you put too much into a very old system. We see it every day in our personal computers when you try to load a big program on an old computer. I mean, a lot of people are going to be listening to you and hearing you say it's fixed now.

38:55That doesn't mean it's fixed tomorrow. And I wrote down this quote from the transportation secretary as he was briefing. He said, you will have more of these. I mean, that's not a lot of comfort for people who are right now chasing their suitcases around Newark Airport. The good thing is it's unfortunately like aircraft accidents, where if you have an aircraft accident with an airline, the scrutiny on that particular airline goes up. So there's more oversight. There's more involvement. And in this case, with the air traffic control system, they know not only just the safety impacts, but the economic impact that a failure of the system.

39:39And fortunately, the system didn't completely fail. That was one of those little tidbits of information that came out in that press conference. The entire system didn't go down. But at these high altitudes where commercial airliners are typically being operated, you know, that is the saturation point. That's why they put so many airplanes on the ground. But the fact is, is that there is a redundancy in the system. that redundancy did kick in to get these aircraft on the ground safely. Now, the biggest safety concern is all the congestion at these now airports where a lot of airplanes weren't supposed to be.

40:17You've run out of tarmac, you've run out of ramp space, you're parking airplanes on taxiways, that now creates a situation on the ground. So when they say that nobody, you know, was really in jeopardy with safety, that's almost true. I mean, the professionalism of the pilots and the controllers are what kept the system safe. But now they have to have that same professionalism with aircraft movements on the ground as they try to then restore their schedule, get airplanes back on their schedule, and actually get back to destination because you've got so many airplanes out of position right now. Yeah, David, I want you to listen to something else the Homeland and security secretary told reporters just a couple moments ago.

41:02So far, what we've seen, there is actually no cyber attack. We're still working through that process. Our teams are working. This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like by the organization and the team he's put together. We're built to handle crisis like this. And that's exactly what we're doing. That last comment there, I mean, to see what we're seeing play out now, David, and the chaos that is now still playing out on tarmacs and is going to play out for the next couple of days, with no space, there's no gates for planes to park, they've run out of space at Reagan Airport in D.C., not far from where that briefing was just happening.

41:49How bad does it have to be to lead them to take this call to do something that has only happened one other time besides 9-11?

42:01Yeah, when he says that there's no cyber attack, there's no sign of that, it concerns me a little because they haven't told us what actually happened. What was different yesterday than was today? And that's one of the things you look at when there's any kind of failure in any system, whether it's an aircraft accident or any system. What was different yesterday than today? They don't know what that is. So to be able to rule something out like that at this point doesn't make much sense to me. And I think the impact goes further than just getting the aircraft back in order. I've been speaking with several flight crews this evening about what's going on with them.

42:37The airlines can't even keep up with what's going on. They're having to pay for their own hotel rooms. I spoke to a captain just recently that said I had to pay for the hotel rooms for my entire crew because the airline doesn't even know where we are or what we're doing at this point. So the system broke down at many, many levels. And as Greg pointed out as well, there's a lot of secondary tiers and safety and it all worked. There was nothing safety. There were no safety issues with anyone. But looking at the impact and understanding this impact starts with honesty, with understanding and integrity about what you know and what you don't know.

43:15And if you don't know something, you can't just say this didn't happen. You have to accept the reality of the fact that you may not know what's going on. Yeah, going to be quite a big price tag for these airlines. Greg and David, it's excellent to have both of you. And thank you for jumping on the breaking news with us tonight. I really appreciate having both your expertise. Pete Mantine is back with me. And Pete, obviously, you've been listening to our experts talk about this. Can I ask you one question, Pete, that I have that people have been messaging me about? They're taking off on international flights.

43:45Some people have been, but domestic flights obviously haven't been. How is that playing out? How do airlines decide what that looks like as this is all going on? They essentially have to prioritize the flights that have the most people on them. And it's probably easier in many cases to just get a flight from the East Coast, say, turn 045 Northeast, talk to International Air Traffic Control, see from the West Coast, roughly the same thing. That's not as difficult as it is right now to take a flight off from Newark and go to Detroit. You know, that is going to be a lot bigger challenge just because of the fact that so many planes, so many pilots, so many flight crews are out of position right now.

44:30So many of those international flights typically fly overnight anyway. Seems like the logical extension of that is to just get them launched and get them going. You know, what's so interesting to me now is that Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, along with Secretary Duffy, essentially admitted that this is an FAA failure. This is their own self-induced problem, that this was something that the FAA did that caused the telecom system to be overloaded. It's called time division multiplexing, TDM. It's like 1960 technology, in some cases a 19th century technology that takes a signal going through a line and makes it into essentially a smaller signal to fit it through that line, that is essentially the backbone of the Federal Aviation Administration's telecom system.

45:22And Secretary Duffy said that system became overloaded 3.36 p.m. Eastern time today. They started to see instability. When you see instability for something that carries the voice communications from air traffic controllers to pilots and pilots back to air traffic controllers, carries the communications between facilities to facilities. There's some 500 in the United States. And then also carries the radar picture in some cases for air traffic controllers to see on their radar scopes where airplanes are. That is a critical failure. And it's very interesting that the Trump administration is using this as an opportunity to grandstand, to try and ask Congress for an extra$20 billion on top of the$30 billion ask that they made earlier.

46:06it's a really interesting time to be the national air traffic control system and to cover this beat covering aviation this is something that affects everybody we're talking about three million air travelers every day every amazon package or many amazon packages rely on the air traffic control system fly on airplanes uh you know it is it touches all of our lives even though we may take aviation and air travel for granted. It's a good argument to make, although it also begs the issue, can Congress be trusted or can the administration be trusted to spend$50 billion wisely? There really needs to be some big questions here.

46:47I think that's a really good point, Pete, because I've been to a million briefings in that room where they try to spin or say it's this issue, this issue. Yes, he was coming out and it was really hot on calling on Congress to pass more funding immediately, even though, of course, Republicans have controlled Congress for two years. But to his point where he came out and he was asked about this and he said, you know, I'd blame the airlines if I could. I'd blame the weather if I could. Sometimes it is the airlines. Sometimes it is the weather. He said this is an issue from the FAA. And I thought it was remarkable that that he acknowledged that essentially tonight.

47:23It's an admission of guilt. I mean, Duffy did lash out at a reporter who did point out that Republicans have had both houses for some time now. So we will see if a lame duck Congress can maybe do something about this. There's aviation issue after aviation issue right now in front of Congress. There's the Alert Act and the Rotaract. These are huge things that were born out of the DCA midair collision, 67 lives lost back in January 2025. 25. So there's a lot of issues at play here. We'll see if Congress takes this one up too. My guess is they're going to be pretty reluctant to cut a blank check to the Trump administration.

48:03Well, and he did say they got 12 and a half billion from the one big beautiful bill. They want 50 billion. A down payment. Pete Mentee, before I let you go, I do want to ask you, because I heard you say this earlier, and I just want to make sure I heard you right, that they at times, I believe within the FAA, have to go on eBay to get either certain computers or computer parts. What was that that you were saying and reporting on earlier? That in some cases, FAA computer systems run on Windows 95 and old technology that we may remember from our elementary school years. You know, like they have to go on eBay, they have said, to find some of this stuff because you can't pull it off a shelf.

48:46They try to use bits and bobs and parts and pieces from other FAA facilities to try and essentially piecemeal jumpstart computer systems to keep them running. The FAA just announced last week that they were beginning to phase out floppy disks in favor of CD-ROMs. I don't think I've used a CD-ROM since like 2007 or 8. And so like, I don't even know you can buy a computer with a cd-rom it's a good question you weren't even you weren't using one in 2008 what not even i think i i think my i think i bought a macbook in 2009 with a cd-rom still in it but even still like the fact that they're moving from one old technology to another one really underscores the problem here and and it does sort of play to duffy's point they do need the money, but how are we going to do this?

49:40And it is really like, you know, this is not like building a ballroom. This is not like building an arch. This is 500 facilities nationwide. This is not as straightforward. And they're going to have a difficult time doing this in the right way. Yeah. What a comfort to everyone watching, Pete, about the technology. Great to have you. Sorry. We're going to check back in with you throughout the hour as we are tracking. And Pete is checking in with airline sources about what they are doing now that this ground has been lifted to get these flights back on track. Joining me here tonight also is the former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

50:13And obviously, you know, people do look to leadership in times like this. We were talking about FAA Ground Stop 9-11, obviously. The other FAA Ground Stop was January 11th, I believe, in 2023. It was January 2023. President Biden was in office. I remember a lot of questions about Pete Buttigieg's leadership at the Transportation Department now that Sean Duffy is running. What do you make of what you heard tonight in terms of just what a mess that we're seeing play out? So the first obvious question is if they were planning upgrades and there was any chance the upgrades could cause massive disruption, there needed to be a public discussion of that in advance.

50:50I mean, this is 101 in terms of how you handle public facing realities in government. If, you know, look at the New York City subway and you've experienced that, I'm sure you give plenty of notice if there's going to be major service disruption. So if you have an ancient system and by upgrading it, you might throw it off entirely. You have to tell the public that in advance. Also, the point you raised earlier, why are you doing it so close to the holiday season when there's other times of the year where there's less travel? But I think the bigger point here is what's happened to America? We were leaders in infrastructure once upon a time.

51:24We invested in research. we invested in, all of the things that made us physically, materially great. And what's happened, especially over the last 30, 40 years, there's been gridlock in Washington so many times, investments weren't made, the buck was passed. So listen to the kind of timelines you're talking about. When this technology comes from, that's a life and death matter for so many Americans. Why is there not a discussion of the fact that in the end, our air traffic control system is way, way out of date. And we're actually not an advanced modern country when it comes to air traffic control and our technology that governs our safety.

52:03Yeah. And this obviously totally falls on other administrations as well. This wasn't just invented two years ago. And so I think if you're looking at that and you're thinking, look how much money they've gotten in the last couple of years or in the last decades, you know, why has that not happened then? But I think what was the craziest thing is that Secretary Duffy is bluntly acknowledging you will have more of these. Probably. And in a way, I admire the honesty. And in another way, I think it's a cop-out. Because, again, he's had every opportunity, as has the president, to say, here's our vision for this difficult situation.

52:38Yes, they inherited it. I want to be fair to them. Here's our vision for it. It's one of the things that affects Americans every day of their lives. Here's our vision for it. And we're going to be honest with you that we're going to need a lot of investment, but we're also going to be honest with you. There could be disruptions. We're going to warn you in advance. We're going to tell you to make other plans or whatever it is. To say in the midst of an unprecedented, basically unprecedented shutdown, oh, by the way, there might be some more. And he's already gotten his$12 billion down payment. That's a cop-out.

53:09I think he's trying to present himself as like this, you know, honest talker, but no, come on. And then to say, this is how the administration handles crisis. They created the crisis. You know, that's not honesty. The honesty would be to say, you know what, we're owning this so much that we're going to tell you we should have warned you. We should have prepared differently. We didn't do that. Yes, we need more money, but we've got to show you a plan as the American people and the Congress that you could actually believe in. Yeah, I mean, because these Democrats who are taking control in January aren't just going to hand over$50 billion to the Trump administration if they don't think that they'll handle it in the way that they will.

53:43We'll see. Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, appreciate you taking a few moments to join us tonight on this. And we are continuing to follow the breaking news here at CNN because the FAA has now lifted that extremely rare nationwide ground stop after four hours and 25 minutes of confusion and chaos. However, the four hours and 25 minutes of confusion and chaos has not ended. The nightmare is still playing out in airports across the country tonight. That's because an estimated 1.5 million people right now are stranded by cancellations at this hour. Some major airlines have effectively closed up shop for the night.

54:23JetBlue, Air Canada have called off their remaining U.S. flights this evening, and cancellations for tomorrow are already piling up. In the last hour at the White House, you heard from two of President Trump's top cabinet officials, the Transportation Secretary and the Homeland Security Secretary, who said that while they have no reason to believe this is caused by a cyber attack, they said they can't 100 % rule anything out at this hour. The Secretary, Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, he pointed to the old equipment that is used by the FAA and said that was causing instability in radar communications as they were making upgrades.

54:59So what happened? Right. I've heard a lot of the rumors like Mark Wayne has. But what we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system. I think every single one of your networks have covered the president and myself talking about this for the last two years. The president for the last year has been asking Congress to fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system. So we have TDM telecom. So this is analog telecom. Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they went down. and I shouldn't say they went down. They started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers.

55:44And because of that, we shut the system down. Secretary Sean Duffy also put the responsibility here on Congress, said that they will now want them to pass$50 billion in what they described as emergency funding to revamp the air traffic control system. Of course, those two secretaries that you're hearing from also both used to be members of Congress. And Congress has been under Republican control for the last two years, something that was noted to the secretaries while they were holding that briefing and demanding more funding from Capitol Hill. Behind the scenes at the White House today as this was playing out and this ground stop was put in place, it was affecting White House officials who were in the air.

56:22And I'm told that Secretary Mullen and also the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were in and out of the West Wing today as officials were scrambling to respond to this and to figure out what exactly was behind it. One source told us that Secretary Hegseth was in the Situation Room as Secretary Mullen stepped outside to speak briefly with reporters before ultimately going to the briefing room. That urgency, though, I should note, wasn't apparent across all of the government social media platforms, namely the president's. About two hours into the ground stop, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social not to provide an update on what was going on at the airports across the country.

56:59But to call for a reviving the Motion Picture Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act, a bill that he says will make the entertainment industry great again. We still have not heard from the president directly on the ground stop that played out. Of course, his two top officials were out there and they are arguing that he has been in constant contact with them. So far, what we've seen, there is actually no cyber attack. We're still working through that process. Our teams are working. This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like by the organization and the team he's put together.

57:41We're built to handle a crisis like this, and that's exactly what we're doing. CNN correspondent Carolina Peguero is live at the Miami International Airport. And obviously, this has just been a nightmare for so many people who are really wanting questions from the airlines, from the government about what's going on. What are you hearing from stranded travelers? Are they getting more guidance from these airlines about whether or not they should wait at the airport, go home, rebook? What are they hearing? Well, they're starting to get answers, but possibly not the answers that they wanted to hear.

58:16So a lot of them are actually having to be rebooked for tomorrow. Others are having to perhaps rent a car. There's a lot of chaos on the rentals. And then also baggage claim is about three to four hours to be able to get your bags if you're going to stay the night here. So there's a lot going on. And then people that are trying to get some special services at the counters of what options they have available. We have some people that are actually been on the phone and waiting in line. How has it been for you? And where are you trying to go and trying to travel to? Well, I just got back from a trip to El Salvador.

58:54This was my connection flight here. And I was supposed to leave at like 7, but that flight got delayed until 10, and then it got canceled. There's no more flights tonight, so I don't know. I'm just trying to get like a free hotel or something. Yeah, so what if you don't? Where are you going to sleep? Here in the airport on the floor somewhere. I'm sure it's very frustrating for you and not what you were expecting. Yeah, definitely not. I'm trying to make it home. I got another trip planned on Tuesday, so I'm flying back to Orlando, so I don't know if I should just fly to Orlando and stay there for a couple days.

59:25I don't know. I got stuff to do tomorrow, so it's complicated. So that's the situation here. Very complicated. Thank you. And a lot of people with very few answers, options that perhaps are not what they were hoping for. But what we're hearing is that they are giving people vouchers, but the airport is getting ready to close and open up again at 5 a.m. So we'll probably see a lot of people sleeping the night here. Caitlin, that is so brutal to hear him say he's going to sleep on the airport floor tonight. Carolina Pagaro, we'll check back in with you as these passengers are drawing to figure out what the heck they're going to do and what's next.

1:00:04Julia Vargas Jones is back at Chicago's O 'Hare International Airport. And Julia, obviously we've been, we're hearing people in Miami say, you know, they just don't know what to do if you're in a connection and you've got somewhere else to go. Or we heard from a woman at Miami earlier who was saying that there's no rental cars for them to get to go back to wherever they were staying. What do you make of what you're hearing from passengers tonight as they're trying to sort what they're doing next? Well, it actually just got a little bit more confusing, not more clarifying, Caitlin, because United just issued a statement that they are resuming operations, including some planned Friday night flights, I should say.

1:00:43And so this is a United terminal. This is where we've been all evening. So we're starting to hear people saying, well, does this mean my flight could get back on the tarmac here? should I plan to actually get on with my planned travels today? It's still quite chaotic behind me here. This is still that same line I showed you last hour that continue to be people. I wish I could tell you that the line had gotten smaller in the past hour, but it just has not. And a lot of these passengers are people that were here in connections, were waiting for other travel arrangements but one of the people that we spoke to today caitlin that i really want to play you with sound bite from her interview with us was a mother who was traveling with her child in a planned vacation with her entire family take a listen she keeps saying all that she's very tired this day oh i'm so sorry are you going home or are you we were supposed to be traveling for work and And we ended up on the plane for a very, well, we were delayed for a couple hours.

1:01:54I know. And then we were on the plane for a couple hours. And then they said, actually, and then we waited a long time. And then we got back in here, back to square one. And she keeps going, all done. We all want it to be done. That's the sentiment still here at Caitlin. Everybody just wants to be done. It's 9 p.m. People are getting very tired. Now, that little girl was waiting in the airport since 8 o 'clock this morning, and her mom said she was probably the best-behaved passenger on her plane altogether. Now, that family got the same kind of guidance that a lot of people are saying. They're saying, try again tomorrow.

1:02:34They just gave up. They were able to get their bags, and then they went home, and they decided to pull a plug on any kind of vacation that we're going to tack on to this work trip. That's what a lot of people are saying. They're saying, I'm just going to give up on this. I'm going to change the plans because it's just no longer feasible or it's not worth it for me. Now, tomorrow will bring a whole other set of challenges because a lot of the people we're speaking to are saying, well, they were told that they could come here to be on standby in the morning or wait for another flight in the evening.

1:03:03People don't want to be in a city they don't live or have any business in. So they are planning to be here again tomorrow to wait for a chance to get possibly on a plane, Caitlin. Yeah, and what are people supposed to do? I mean, to rent a car, to get a hotel? It's extremely expensive to do any of those things. Well, we have heard a lot of that, too. Yeah. I met a group of girls who said they just met at a Salesforce conference they had never met before. They worked together, and they decided, well, instead of just waiting for another flight, let's just rent a car together and drive back to New York.

1:03:38All three of us will make a road trip out of it. You know, talk about lemonade. That's a long, long drive for them. I mean, but of everyone, I feel bad for everyone who is stranded right now on a tarmac, on a plane, at an airport bar. But Melissa with her her child there, I mean, shout out to the parents who are doing this. Julia Vargas Jones, thank you for that update. We'll check back in with you. Of course, these passengers, these airlines want answers. We heard from the Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, who is talking about why this is happening. What it appears to be right now is as Secretary Duffy and FAA was going in and putting patches into the system, they were putting new equipment and new technology.

1:04:28And that new equipment, new technology just wasn't it was overwhelming the older system, which is why Secretary Duffy made it very clear. The patchwork doesn't work. The patchwork doesn't work. My colleague, Pete Muntean, has been working his airline sources all day. Pete, I mean, to hear the Homeland Security Secretary say that in front of Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, I thought was kind of remarkable. It was a huge admission of guilt from the Trump administration that this was essentially a self-inflicted wound, that they overloaded the telecom system that is the backbone of the nationwide air traffic traffic control system.

1:05:09leading to it melting down. It's a system called TDM, or Time Division Multiplexing. It's essentially 1960s technology, copper wire, and they were trying to essentially push too much data through these lines. And Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says around 3.36 p.m. Eastern Time, they started to see some instability, and then that system essentially came crashing down. It's a critical system because not only does it carry voice communications, we're talking ground-to-ground communications between air traffic control facilities, but ground-to-air and air-to-ground. So controllers communicating with pilots and pilots communicating with controllers.

1:05:53And then also it carries some data, including the feeds for the radar screens in front of the pilots, or rather the controllers. So essentially these air traffic controllers were operating when this system got overloaded, blind and deaf. The last place you want to be as an air traffic controller. So the FAA says it had no choice but to stop all flights. 3 ,500 flights were in the air, about 11 ,000 still scheduled to fly, leaving about a million and a half people in the lurch. Now the big question is about the ask layered on top of this by Transportation Secretary Duffy and DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen of$50 billion to try and revamp the air traffic control system, something that they have been calling BNAT, or a brand new air traffic control system.

1:06:51They're asking for an additional$20 billion. They asked used to be$30 billion to try and essentially do a major overhaul. But there's some big questions here. Can the Trump administration be trusted with all this money? And can they do this by 2028? That was their original goal by the end of this Trump administration. Still some huge questions here about what was the patch that was being pushed through? What will continue to happen? Are we out of the woods yet when it comes to these kind of patches? Why did this have to take place now? Why not do this at a different time? Why not do this overnight?

1:07:27There are some huge big asks here. And we still have to dig into this. But to that point, though, one thing I mean, as we have been reflecting on what has happened in the last, you know, 10 days and the U.S. elections, this could be the first real challenge that the Trump administration is facing with a Democratic majority. Because, yeah, they've got Republicans there for a couple more weeks. President wants them to get some other things passed. But the idea that they're going to be able to get this passed seems kind of unlikely. I mean, I've already seen Marjorie Taylor Greene, former congresswoman, former Republican congresswoman, criticizing them coming out and asking for more federal funding when saying they just got$12.5 billion in the legislation they passed last year.

1:08:12Duffy calls it a down payment, that$12.5 billion. And it begs mentioning that during infrastructure week in the early days, first Trump administration, this was kind of part of the plan. That also included privatizing the air traffic control system, by the way. This has been pushed by the Trump administration essentially since the early days of this term of the Trump administration, not long after the midair collision just outside of Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people so tragically. And even earlier this year, there was a huge rollout, essentially like a field day at the Department of Transportation headquarters where they showed all of the old infrastructure being used by the Federal Aviation Administration, old routers and switchers and radars.

1:09:03This is something that they have a drum that they have been beating for some time. Will this be a come together moment? I think that remains to be seen. You know, Pete, putting that aside is, you know, we'll see what the fight happens. People at the airport right now, they want to know when this is going to be fixed. What is your sense from the airlines that you've been hearing from? Some who, they basically stopped operations tonight. We were just hearing at Newark, they're telling passengers, actually, we're going to continue operations for United for some of those flights. I mean, people do not know what to do right now.

1:09:35And there's really no one clear place to get guidance. It's such a patchwork and the airlines are overloaded. I heard from an airline source earlier who said our goal is to get 100 percent of these people to where they need to go. The bottom line here is the skies are empty and the bars are full. And it's so tough for people to get an answer from their airlines because they are short staffed too. I mean, in some places, airplanes are stuck on taxiways and tarmacks because there are no gates left for planes to go. And Reagan National Airport is even told through the FAA to say to airlines, don't land here if you have to divert.

1:10:11We're too full. So the biggest thing right now is just to wait. If you have a hotel room to go to, go there. You can sort it out with the airline later. You can always put it on a credit card and try and get reimbursed at a later period of time. The big thing is to stay glued to the app. I would say if you're at the airport, probably leave the airport. It seems that some airlines, yes, are still trying to push flights through. United Airlines says they're trying to do that. Delta Airlines says they're trying to do that. But the issue here is that so many flight crews have been sitting at the airport.

1:10:42They face regulatory limitations where they time out. They may not be able to fly legally because they've been waiting around so long. So it's just going to be a tough go here. Shout out to all the chilies at airports across the country. And really, on a serious note, shout out to the air traffic controllers and the pilots and the flight crews and the ground crews and the gate agents still trying to make this happen. You know, like this is just so tough when so many people are left in the lurch. And there's a real human toll here, too, of the fact that these controllers were essentially operating without the basic information that they need to do their jobs.

1:11:20They face a really stressful and tough job, too. And so the fact that this happened without any sort of injury or loss of life, planes landed safely, there are procedures in place, really all is well that ends well, no big deal, is a real testament to how aviation works when things fail, but it shouldn't fail for there to be a call to action. Yeah, it's such a good point. And shout out to them. Airport bartenders doing the Lord's work probably right now. Pete Muntean, you are too. We'll check back in with you. CNN's business editor at large, Richard Quest, is here, as well as our national security analyst, Alex Plitsas, and White House correspondent for Bloomberg, Jeff Mason.

1:12:00I heard you, Jeff, asking questions inside the briefing. Jeff, what stood out to you about what the president, what he's doing, his top officials, how they're handling this? Well, I thought it was interesting to hear Secretary Duffy describe, and this was in response to the question that I asked, how it actually manifested in the air today. The fact that there were airplanes who were, at least at times, not able to communicate with air traffic control, I think really underscores the depth of the safety risk. Now, both of the cabinet secretaries were saying that there wasn't a safety risk, that people were safe.

1:12:41They were asked repeatedly if it would continue to be safe, given the fact that Secretary Duffy indicated this could happen again. But it seems pretty notable that there There were times when there were airplanes in the air when they were not able to communicate with their air traffic controllers. And that is a pretty, pretty big example of the manifestation of what happened today. Yeah. I mean, Richard Quest. Yeah. Whoa. This was, I mean, what struck me about the press conference or the news conference that they held is that both secretaries knew full well that this was highly possible. Everybody in aviation has known that the whole system is being held together with two tin cans, bit of string and a lot of chewing gum.

1:13:31And for years. Not enough. No, but for years, the safety redundancy level is still there. And therefore, yes, there's a very high degree of reliability to ensure safety. But this has been known. I mean, I will say Sean Duffy is right in one respect. They've been asking for money for a very long time in the tens of billions. But he did not answer the question why, since they've had both houses for the last two years, he hasn't had his 30 or 50 billion. He got$12 billion as a down payment, but he hasn't managed to get his own party in Congress to give him the rest of the money. And everybody has known for a very long time that BNATs, this is the system Pete was talking about, was going to need more money and needed it sooner rather than later.

1:14:20I think this could be the catalyst for some bipartisan spending in the next few months or next year. Yeah, but the real question is, to that point, yeah, maybe Democrats say this is a problem. We agree. I mean, obviously, they passed the infrastructure bill under President Biden. Some people are asking what happened, where exactly that money went, what was done then. Are Democrats going to say, yeah, we'll give the Trump administration$50 billion? I'm not so sure of that. No, but what will happen is you don't buy infrastructure when somebody tells you that it needs to be replaced. You do buy infrastructure once the whole thing falls apart and everybody says, oh, my goodness, how on earth did this happen?

1:14:59whether it's a bridge or a road or an airport or an air traffic control tower, because everybody has a vested interest in putting it right. The rest of the world, let's be honest, I travel more than most. The rest of the world is laughing at the United States' poor level of national infrastructure. When the US gets it right, it does it better than anyone else. But this has been needed to be spent for a long time. Well, I mean, it also, everyone's question today was, is this related to Iran? Is this related to the Microsoft outage? Does it have anything to do with NVIDIA yesterday? When you look at that and what Secretary Mullen said tonight, they said they're still investigating it.

1:15:41They can't rule it out 100 percent, but he doesn't. No one's taking credit for it. It doesn't seem to be a cyber attack. I mean, it does raise questions about how vulnerable the system is. And if someone did decide to carry out some nefarious act, what could happen to Americans? So I think that's entirely accurate. And speaking to friends trapped in Jamaica and speaking to senior intelligence officials in the national security community, the same question was asked, was this a cyber attack? And to your point, there was not enough evidence to rule it out, which is why we didn't see a press conference earlier, because they had to get it right.

1:16:09So not only, to Richard's point, you have this archaic infrastructure from a physical standpoint, old servers, old everything else, old software, which one of those failed? But then on top of it, could it have been a nefarious actor in the midst of crisis involving Russia over Ukraine, Iran in the midst of threats of cyber attacks in general terms? They were suspected to be behind the hackings of supermarkets across Europe, where food was rotted and everything else that happened. And that also has to be ruled out on top of it. And if you get that wrong, you accuse a nation state. And at that point, it becomes a catalyst for a response from the United States.

1:16:40So they really had to get that right. And they were unable to rule it out for a long time, which is why we didn't see it in a press conference earlier today. What else stood out to you from what you heard from the DHS secretary? I think, you know, the response and the fact that the infrastructure was that old, that this could really happen again, I think, with Richard's point here. Oh, it could happen tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, this is what, sorry. Yeah, but that's the alarming thing. Yes, but they can't say it won't until they replace it. This is the catch-22. You can't say it won't happen again until you spend the money and replace the old stuff.

1:17:15Yeah. Yeah. And I think the second piece then is the fact they still haven't ruled out that there still could have been a nefarious actor here. So it doesn't appear to be that way at this point, but it still doesn't seem we have a definitive answer. And that's still what I'm hearing from national security officials in the background. Jeff Mason, one question that Kristen Holmes asked that I thought was on point was why we haven't heard from the president directly on this. He had been posting on Truth Social about something that's important to him, making sure the entertainment industry is supported in a bipartisan fashion.

1:17:43He posted about the riverboat crash that happened in New Orleans this afternoon. but it's pretty unusual for the president to send out his top aides, including his chief of staff. And he's right down the hall from the briefing room and not come out as well. He likes to come out. I mean, he likes to weigh in. Let me rephrase it that way, because he actually hasn't been in the briefing room that much in the last two years. He usually takes questions in the Oval Office and in places with a smaller group of reporters, as you certainly know, Caitlin. But, you know, I heard Kristen's question, too. I think it's fair to wonder, given his penchant for wanting to be president.

1:18:28On the other hand, I think most presidents probably also would have sent out their DHS secretaries or their Department of Transportation secretaries. So it didn't strike me as something that was that unusual compared to other presidents. But often when we compare this president to other presidents, it is more unusual. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting that he didn't want to come out. Actually, you saying that makes me hearken back to 2020 during the early COVID press conferences, which, of course, that's not what we're talking about here. But I'll share the story anyway. When Vice President Pence started giving COVID briefings in the briefing room, President Trump decided, oh, wait a second, I want in on that.

1:19:11And then he ended up giving them. So, fair enough to the question. But I don't think it's unusual to put out your top two cabinet secretaries on the issue instead of coming out yourself. Yeah, I think it was just more unusual. He was posting on the entertainment industry in the middle of this national meltdown that was playing out. And Richard, you know, as you look at this. Go ahead, Jeff. I was just going to add, I mean, the other sort of stand back piece of it that's maybe not necessarily related to to what he's posting about is this is it comes at a time. It comes in a year when President Trump has been describing the United States as being in its golden age.

1:19:51And yet I was getting texts today about, is everything falling apart because of that email outage, because of this ground halt? So the messaging is a little bit tricky right now for this administration to say, look, everything is going gangbusters when actually really basic things are not going very well. Yeah, well, I mean, to that point, Richard, as Miles O 'Brien, our aviation expert, was saying earlier, this administration's made clear if they prioritize building it, they're going to build it. It's literally happening across Washington. I have little doubt that if they decided to do it, they would do it and it would get done.

1:20:34And my example for that is Newark. When Newark had all those problems 18 months ago, the administration came in and said, to hell with this. We're just going to get this done and pay the money, get the fibers in, link them all up. And they did it. So admittedly, United was very much involved. This is going to take some time, both physically, economically. I shudder to think what this is doing to the economics of the country at the moment. Yeah, Jeff asked that question during the briefing. What is this going to cost? They have no idea at this point. It depends how long the recovery takes. The recovery, I think, is going to take days to get really back to normal.

1:21:12because the airlines at least know what they're doing now. And this is a major event, but they do know what they're doing. Well, I mean, they do know what they're doing. If you're sitting at home or you're waiting for your flight to be rescheduled, or you're at the airport even, a lot of Americans would be asking, is it safe to go to the airport right now? So I think it is. If the systems are coming back online, there's been a sufficient amount of testing and determination made that they can go back on. But this is amidst a compounding series of factors. So we have this. We have a refined product crisis coming out of the Gulf.

1:21:41So we talk a lot about how a lot of oil has been reflowed through pipelines to get around the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. But that's crude. So refined products like jet fuel, which is feeding the aircraft, as well as diesel, we're seeing shortages of because they can only really move by boat. So you're seeing an increase in prices there. You're now seeing this incident. And then on top of that, broader geo strategically, we have a backlog of 16 ,000, 18 ,000 commercial aircraft on order that can't be manufactured because there's a backlog at the factories right now. So you've got older fleets where maintenance is becoming more of a problem.

1:22:11You put all that together, and this puts a lot of strain on the airlines. We've been very fortunate not to see any major catastrophic incidents, and that is a testament to the men and women who are on the manufacturing lines and the people doing the maintenance every day at the airlines. They're doing God's work out there, as well as the bartenders do. Never forget the bartenders when you're thinking. That's a life lesson. Alex, Richard, Jeff, great to have all of you here tonight. Jeff coming to us from the White House, I should note, because of that late-night briefing that happened. And we're still following this breaking news.

1:22:37Airports across the country are still dealing with this nationwide ground stop. It's been lifted after more than four hours. My pleasure. Bye. As you can see, the ramifications are still being felt. Earlier today, before this crisis was underway, the New York City mayor, Zoram Mamdani, made his own announcement about the president, talking about a nationwide deal that they cut to delay some new food stamp requirements that are set to go into place. It's a 90-day extension that will give New York City bodegas, small grocery stores across the country, more time to comply with the new rules that came from that bill, also coincidentally the one that gave the FAA$12.5 billion.

1:23:14It's something that the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week would not happen, that everything would go into effect on the right date. I talked to Mayor Momdani about this right before air. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for being here. Obviously, we had booked you to talk about something else, but this meltdown is now happening in our air traffic control system nationwide. New York is home to two major airports that are being affected by this. Do you have any information? Have you gotten any briefings on what's going on? So we're staying in close communication with our federal and our state partners to assess potential impacts to the city as a whole.

1:23:49Right now, to any New Yorker who is preparing to travel, my advice would be to prepare for extensive delays. And if we have any additional updates, we will share them directly. And has the federal government been able to give you or Governor Hochul any guidance on, you know, what this could look like and how long this could last? At this time, it's pretty fast moving. And it's hard to make a prediction, frankly. Yeah. I mean, it's just brutal for all these New Yorkers sitting at airports now for hours. Some of whom are trying to get home. Some of whom are trying to get wherever they were planning to go.

1:24:18And for now, they are just sitting there. Yeah. And so we're obviously following that closely. and just before this ground stop went into effect, you were making an announcement also in relation to the federal government that basically they have agreed to let the requirements that are going into place for a lot of stores here in the city, these new SNAP requirements of what they carry, there's now a 90-day basic lag period, basically. I thought that was interesting because the USDA put out a statement last week saying all this is going into effect the day after the election, no exceptions. What changed?

1:24:53Well, I called the president and I spoke to him directly about the fact that this could devastate bodegas and corner stores across our city. And frankly, that this was something that could impact small businesses across the entire country. Because we know that here in New York City, up to 30 % of a corner store's revenue comes from SNAP. And if they weren't able to meet these new requirements, they could lose their SNAP authorization. And that would be a staggering impact to them, but also to the larger community who now wouldn't be able to use their SNAP at a local store. And I spoke to the president.

1:25:26I mentioned how this would impact small businesses, working New Yorkers, and the president agreed to create a 90-day extension at the least. And that is something that I'm incredibly thankful for. You said at the least. Do you think it could be longer than 90 days potentially? I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to reconcile this. But if it's not, then I will bring that case right back up because so long as there's something that working New Yorkers need, I will make the case. How did you appeal to the president on this? Because obviously he touts this bill. He knows what's in this bill. He signed it, obviously, into law and pushed for its passage.

1:25:56Did you appeal to him as a New Yorker who's been to a bodega or what did you say to him? Well, I think for all of the policy disagreements the president and I have, we do share a love of this city. And a bodega, as any New Yorker will tell you, is a part and parcel of what it means to be a New Yorker. And I told the president that this is something that I've heard from a lot of bodega owners across the city. We had more than 100 reach out to us. We convened roundtables to hear about how this could impact their business and that it would really impact more than a million New Yorkers. And the president heard me and the president agreed that you could create this extension.

1:26:31And we appreciate it because it's an extension that he's agreed to not just for New York City, but for the entire country. And that is something that will help small businesses from coast to coast. One question that basically every Democrat is getting asked since last Tuesday is how they could and if they could work with the federal government. Given how you have worked with the president, maybe to a lot of people's surprise, maybe even his surprise or your surprise, what would your advice be to these congressional Democrats that are about to take over in Washington? I think it's important to both be honest about where you disagree and look for any areas of agreement.

1:27:03And for the president and I, that's New York City. And we make the case to each other of what are the ways to benefit this city. And frankly, over the course of this relationship, we've been able to free a New Yorker who was detained by ICE to secure a visa for a grieving mother so she wouldn't have to watch her child be buried from thousands of miles away. And now today, three months of relief for small businesses who were panicking about whether or not they were going to be able to keep their doors open. And that comes from acknowledging the differences and looking for wherever there's the possibility of working together.

1:27:33And I think it comes back to the fact that for working New Yorkers we're sitting at home, they want to know if you can deliver for them. They don't care who you're talking to to do it. And that's why it behooves us to speak to anyone and everyone that we can. So you're saying they should try to work with Trump where they can? As long as they're being honest to themselves and their actual policies and principles, if there is a place of potential collaboration, I think it's more important to deliver for working New Yorkers than it is to try and just speak to those that you agree with. And when it comes to the president, the thing that I've spoken to him most about, frankly, is about the importance of housing and delivering more housing in this city than we've seen for decades.

1:28:07And that's something that I'm hopeful for now that we see Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. New York City Mayor Zora Mamdani, thank you for joining us tonight. I hope you don't need flights booked in the near future. Appreciate your time. Up next, CNN's Nick Waugh is going to join me live from LAX, where travelers are stranded, stuck in disbelief, and trying to find a way to their destinations after an hours-long ground stop. We'll have the latest right up.

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1:29:33Don't miss huge deals dropping every week. After more than four hours of uncertainty and thousands of delays and cancellations, the nationwide ground stop has been lifted tonight. But the chaos at the airport, as you can see here with all those suitcases, is still playing out. We heard from the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, who said earlier that more than 3 ,500 planes were in the air when that ground stop was issued earlier today due to a communications meltdown. He said that at least over 800 flights were diverted, over 150 rerouted to new destinations. And with so many aircraft unable to fly at the height of this crisis, some airports were actually running out of parking spots and space at the gates for these planes to go.

1:30:18My colleague Nick Watt has been live at LAX, the Los Angeles busiest airport on a normal day, much less on a day like today. And I think one question that so many people still have tonight is what they should be doing. Should they stay at the airport? Should they go? Are you hearing from people who are getting any guidance tonight? I mean, Caitlin, it depends which airline you're flying. So JetBlue has canceled all flights for tonight. And, you know, one of the reasons why people aren't getting mad and shouting is there's nobody to blame here at the airport. And interestingly, I just sort of eavesdropped on a little interaction.

1:30:54People came up to the counter. The first thing the guy said to them, the agent said to them, was no airlines are at fault here. This is a government issue. So he then said that the first flight he could get this woman on to JFK New York was Monday afternoon, 4.30 p.m. Now, we have seen a little bit of testiness. We saw a couple of guys getting a little bit shouty, getting a little bit shovy with each other. It was diffused by their wives. As I say, I think generally people aren't getting mad because there's no one in the airport to get mad at. Now, this is Southwest. Southwest is trying to get flights out tonight.

1:31:31They are getting flights out tonight. This line, though, is moving very, very slowly. Caitlin, last time I spoke to you, maybe an hour and a half ago, there were some Brazilian women standing here we were chatting to. they've done an S but they still haven't got to the front. Also some people who'd like checked in checked their bags before the grand stop they're now trying to find their bags and their bags are on a plane that's somewhere who knows. Listen four and a half hours nearly of this grand stop that would normally be 20 ,000 people taking off from LAX. Of course none of them did so that backlog is going to take some time.

1:32:09You know, I've got to say, I have never been more grateful to be in an airport, but not to be trying to fly out tonight. I do not envy these people, Caitlin. I know. It's such a bummer because obviously if you're flying, you're probably going somewhere exciting to celebrate something with somebody fun. And it's nice to hear people are at least trying to be patient despite all of this. You can't blame them. Nick Watt, thank you for that update from LAX. We'll continue to check back in with you as we are hearing more and getting some guidance from airlines here. We also have our CNN aviation analyst, Mary Schiavo here with me.

1:32:48Mary, have you ever seen anything like what's playing out tonight? Well, no, not self-inflicted damage by the FAA, 9-11, of course. But, you know, this is the disaster that both the Office of Inspector General of the DOT, my old office, and the General Accountability Office have been predicting literally since the 1990s. And where, you know, the predictability factor does not excuse it, what is really questionable is, you know, they had to scrap several systems back in the 1990s, cost$10 to$15 billion. The system simply did not work that they were trying to build. And the FAA didn't really understand what they were buying.

1:33:34Then from 2003 to 2025, they built what was called the Next Generation Air Traffic Control System. Great goals switched from radar to satellite-based. But unfortunately, by 2024, they found out that they spent$36 billion, and according to the General Accountability Office, only got 16 % of the deliverables. And then finally, by 2024, 2025, it was announced that 75 % of the system was simply not sustainable. So this is the, you know, I can say it's a disaster without death, but it was very predictable. And the cost of$3 to$50 billion, which they're predicting, I think that probably will not be enough.

1:34:17because remember, they have to build basically three systems, the one that's running, the one that you're maintaining and the emergency backup. It's a big job. I mean, as far as timing, what do they need to do immediately to fix something like this? Because, I mean, you saw Secretary Mullen bluntly acknowledging it's the patchwork of the new systems that are essentially overwhelming the old systems that resulted in this tonight, which I thought was a remarkable acknowledgement from the federal government about what went wrong here. I mean, did that stand out to you? It did stand out. We even heard the secretary say that they were putting digital onto analog and using the old copper wire systems, which shouldn't have been the problem.

1:35:07But the warning bells were putting digital systems, new computer systems onto old analog systems, which would date back to the 1990s. And, you know, that's alarming. But also, it also points out that they were not on top of all the various contracts and contractors, because all these systems, it's not, you know, it's not the FAA that installs all this and builds it. It's contractors. and the FAA has to understand each and every part of this system. And, you know, I know Secretary Duffy's only had a year and a half in the job, but that is why they have always failed. They have pieces and parts, like I call it, I call it, you know, the Frankenstein system.

1:35:48They have pieces and parts of air traffic control, and that's what happened here. They hung new ornaments on the, you know, on the old tinsel Christmas tree, and it just did not work. And that will keep happening until we do get the new system. But it's very expensive. I predict it'll be more than 50 billion. Well, to your point about, I mean, that's such a great analogy in comparison of a tinsel Christmas tree and you're putting these new ornaments on it and the tree itself collapses as it did tonight. They just rolled out this new AI supported system. It's called SMART. It's supposed to help with air traffic control.

1:36:23And a lot of people were asking today, is that to blame for this? And Secretary Duffy said tonight it wasn't. It wasn't the new stuff. It was the old stuff. But does it make sense to you why they would be rolling something like that out? Should, you know, if they haven't fixed the copper wire situation that's playing out and they're still using, you know, they just got off of floppy disks, as Pete Muntean was noting earlier? Exactly. And why wasn't it coordinated? Because I can tell you, you know, from from my work there and then in working and reading the reports of the General Accountability Office is there is insufficient coordination.

1:37:00There's a contractor. There are pieces of this system being worked on by one contractor for smart. Another contractor was working on this. And someone has to manage all this or we're going to see history repeat itself. Pieces and parts will be purchased and they won't hang together as a system. And so, you know, it seems like it should be surprising, but we've seen it before. It's deja vu. For the passengers who are so frustrated tonight and completely understandably so, a lot of them still figuring out if they're even getting on a flight. I mean, what would you say to them is your biggest question that you're walking away with after that briefing?

1:37:43Well, my biggest question is, is who, again, is managing all this and who is planning for it? I think that Congress also plays a role in this because remember, Congress has oversight over all of the billions, you know,$100 billion over the last three decades they have shoveled out to get us a new air traffic control system. And so Congress has the oversight over the spending, and they have to watch very closely for this because it's on them too. After all, General Accountability Office reports to Congress. And so they are going to have to, they have to deliver. There's no choice. 75 % of the system, according to their own reports, will not work.

1:38:22And while they're delivering this, and they're going to have to deliver the money, they have to stay on top of it. We used to say when the hearings end and the camera crews go home, Congress stops its oversight. There's just no room for that right now. So yes, they're going to spend the money, but they better be doing the oversight. Mary Schiavo, that's a great comment and a great point. Thank you so much for joining us as always. Love having your expertise. My colleague Shimon Pogubez has been covering all of this live tonight from Newark International Airport. Shimon, last time we heard from you, United was telling some people to go to their gates.

1:38:57They were going to try to resume operations. What's the latest so far? So as far as we know, some flights are resuming. We were actually trying to ourselves help people get in. We came across a group of women. One of them needed a wheelchair. It's like these little things that normally function well in an airport. There wasn't anyone to get her in a wheelchair to get her through the gate. And they were about to miss their flight. And then finally, they found someone and they were sort of almost at one point doing it themselves. But that's sort of what's happening here, you know, or if people have too much luggage, but finally some of the luggage check-in, that's back in order.

1:39:38There's a couple of flights leaving here tonight, but the stories are really just heartbreaking. I spoke to one man who's trying to get to Austin, Texas for a wedding tomorrow. He's hoping he get on a flight. One of the stories that I heard earlier today was about a man who was trying to make it home to Tampa for his grandmother's 90th birthday. He's going to miss that. Another woman I was talking to, she almost was in tears. She just got back from vacation. She spent several days in Athens, and she was connecting through here. And she's like, my vacation is completely ruined. And these are the stories that we're hearing from people.

1:40:16One family we were talking to said they were trying to make a cruise tomorrow, and they're concerned that they're not going to be able to make it. And just now I was talking to a couple and they were too angry to go on camera, but they're, you know, they want to know what happened. They're pretty angry at some of the explanation that we're hearing from the government. The fact that they've been sitting at the airport now for hours, they tried to go get a hotel room. Every hotel room around here is booked. They can't get a rental car. So they're going to keep trying. They want to get home to Raleigh, North Carolina.

1:40:48It's been those kind of stories that have just been so heartbreaking. people who are just desperate. They need to get home now, they're saying, for whatever reason. And the help that they need, you know, some of the elderly who need assistance of the, normally, the airport staff is here and able to help them, and they're not here to do that. And we've seen people just running here. This idea that, okay, there's a 10 o 'clock flight, there's an 11 o 'clock flight, and they're running, trying to get through the gates. And then the United staff is saying, wait a second, some of these planes aren't even taken off.

1:41:20We don't have the personnel to get the flights off the ground. And so who knows what's going on, you know, beyond these gates here, because we're not in there, obviously, and we don't know exactly what's happening at the gates and if people are actually getting on their flights. But there aren't many flights. And I was looking at the board tomorrow right now, it says many of the flights are taking off on time, but we'll see. And I don't know, it's just heartbreaking to see some of this for people for various reasons and the importance of getting to a destination are not going to be able to, you know, I mean, I wish them luck.

1:41:57And, you know, it's been nice to talk to some of them and to try to help them at least. But even some of the United staff, they've been so kind to them. There aren't many of them here, but they're trying to help them as best as they can. And hopefully, hopefully things will get back to normal starting, you know, tomorrow, perhaps in the afternoon or maybe even the morning if we're lucky. Yeah, because, you know, so say that they rescheduled your flight for 7 a.m. tomorrow. You're getting up at 5. You're showing up at the airport. You're going to try to check your bag. I mean, it seems like the residual chaos from this is nowhere near over.

1:42:29And, you know, to your point, Simone, about getting a car, driving, getting a hotel room. I mean, all of that's incredibly expensive. And to do it immediately, it's also difficult to even just do that on the spot. And I mean, nothing is more expensive, though, than people's time. And that has been wasted by all of this tonight. And, you know, as you heard the White House articulating, no one was in danger. They said that's why they put this in place to protect people from these outages. But, you know, you've got to understand the frustration that so many of these people have looking at what's happening and what's playing out.

1:43:04Yeah, and I think the answers that the government gave, I'm not sure it's sitting well with people. I mean, people haven't had time for it to register, right? They're asking us, well, what do you make of this? You know, it's hard to completely understand at this point when all you're trying to do is to get home. They just cannot understand how this could happen in this day and age with all the technology, with all the systems that are available, how this could happen. And flying is just, it's not easy. You know, it's hard and it's expensive. People are rebooking flights. The one family who is trying to make this cruise tomorrow, the woman told me that she just bought new tickets for tomorrow.

1:43:48The one-way ticket costs more than the round-trip ticket. But they've spent a lot of money to go on a cruise, and she said, I have to get my family on this cruise. And that's the hardship here. It's expensive to fly. And now all of this added expense is really hard on people. Yeah, I mean, you just got to feel for all of them. Shimon, glad you're there on the ground hearing their stories, talking to them. We'll continue to check back in with you as we are trying to figure out what's going on with this chaos. And as Shimon noted, this is disrupting people's travel plans, vacation plans, 90th birthday plans.

1:44:24It's also affecting tomorrow's college football schedule. There's a lot more playing out here. A lot of these teams flying in and out as they typically do the day before a game. We have more updates on what exactly is playing out across the nation now that this nationwide groundstop has been lifted right after a quick break.

1:44:45The domino effect of this nationwide groundstop is just starting to get underway. Now multiple college football games for tomorrow are being rescheduled because the players didn't make their flights to get there. For example, Mississippi State's home game against Auburn tomorrow has been moved from noon Eastern to 415. The University of Central Florida's home game against Arizona State is going to start an hour and 15 minutes later than it was planned. We're seeing all this play out. We're going to continue to cover all the developments here at CNN. Our breaking news coverage continues right after this.

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