Friday, November 13, 2026

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0:59Good evening. I'm Hallie Jackson in for Tom, and we are tracking a fast-moving and very much developing situation right now. You've got flights across the country grounded with the FAA issuing a very rare nationwide ground stop. They're citing some sort of communication failure or outage. That is paralyzing airport after airport coast to coast. Look at this. You're looking at runways now from Boston to D.C. to St. Louis to Baltimore. A stunning standstill for these planes. the FAA issuing this shutdown because of what they call extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. This means that planes aren't really taking off.

1:38Planes that are in the air can land. They've got to land at their destination. These are some of the scenes at airports all across the country. Take a look at some of these. Millions of people in limbo. The comms have been down for, at this point, hours, and there's really no clear timeline on when this is going to be lifted. Some 13 ,000 flights have been delayed or canceled in the U.S. today. One woman talking about what all of this has meant. She's already on a plane capturing the moment that the pilot breaks the news. There's a problem with air traffic control nationwide. So they're having issues with, it sounds like radar and some communications issues.

2:16So they're asking us to hold at the gate. And I think that is going to affect pretty much all departing aircraft across the country. Then this ATC message coming over the airwaves telling pilots that yes, that ground stop is now in place. Listen. Southwest 2179, just a heads up, we went into a national ground stop. This kind of a ground stop is extraordinarily rare, which may be why you saw Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullen approaching the cameras today, trying to reassure Americans, saying he's getting a bunch of calls asking, is this something nefarious? He said, no, at this point, there is no indication that this is some kind of a nefarious attack, that everybody is safe.

3:00That's his quote. He says there's not a risk to people who are in the air. A source tells NBC News, though, as we look ahead at the domino effects at this point, that several airports, including Reagan National outside Washington, including O 'Hare Airport outside Chicago, they're running out of space for these planes to park. They don't have a place to put them, meaning flights may be diverted. We've got full team coverage tonight from major travel hubs across the country as this national travel shutdown stretches into the night. We'll start with our Tom Costello, who covers aviation for us, with the very latest.

3:30Tonight, America's airport's at a sudden and stunning standstill. The airport feels more like the holidays versus a Friday night. There are just people everywhere. The FAA, in what it calls a response to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety, ordering a ground stop at every airport in the country. From Chicago's O 'Hare. It's crazy. I mean, it's a Friday night, too. to a hobby airport in Houston. NBC's Priscilla Thompson was there right after the FAA's emergency move. Yeah, we're getting another announcement right now of them again saying, making you aware there's this nationwide ground stop going on.

4:05Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posting just after 4 p.m. The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all air route traffic control centers. This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA. Out of abundant caution, we have grounded all the flights, and all the flights are accounted for. As incoming flights, either internationally or the flights that are currently still in the air, we'll be dealing with those case by case. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen saying there is no risk to people currently on planes. We're getting a ton of calls saying, is this a terrorist attack?

4:47Is this a terrorist attack? everybody's safe. There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they're flying or anything like that. I just want to make sure everybody's at ease about that. Aircraft already in the sky will be allowed to continue to their final destinations. Former air traffic controller David Riley. If those airplanes can't leave and airplanes are arriving, you're going to have a space problem. Sorting through the chaos of thousands of flights now canceled will depend on how long the ground stop lasts. We wanted to go to this wedding really badly. With attention now turning to what caused it, Mullen not ruling out a potential cyber attack.

5:25We're not ruling out anything at this point. The first thing is the safety of everybody that's flying. We are assured that everybody is safe. Let me bring in Tom who's joining us now. Okay, so here we are. We are three hours plus into this thing. This ground stop in effect, as you pointed out, there are very few planes that can take off, but that's because of where they're heading. It's international. That's right. So the FAA is allowing a very select few flights on the coasts that are heading overseas to depart. But if you are in the United States itself or going across country, those flights are not going anywhere right now.

6:01They're staying grounded. And by the way, I just talked to an airline source who says they've got a real problem, and that is that their crews are going illegal. In other words, they are going beyond the amount of duty time that they can have. So they're now expiring. Planes are out of position. And he says, I'm not quite so sure that we're going to be up and running tonight. So that's if he's speaking for the industry, he's not. He's speaking for his own airline. But very often, you know, what one airline experiences they all experience. But this speaks to the timeline, Tom, even if you were to snap your fingers and this outage goes away in 30 seconds, it's certainly not going to take 30 more seconds for people to get on a plane and get where they're going.

6:37I mean, this is going to take some time. Yeah, that's right. And to reiterate that the frequencies that are affected here are the high altitude in route radio frequencies. So in other words, 30 ,000 feet traffic, right? But they can't let anybody fly when they've got some disruption in their airline frequencies nationwide. And I'm told it may also be affecting routers. So this is just an ongoing problem they're trying to dissect right now. And we have no idea what caused it other than it appears to be some kind of comms failure, right? That's correct. And listen, this comes at the same time when they are, have been just this week going national with this new AI program.

7:11The AI program is designed to help controllers make decisions about where there may be congestion, where there may be weather. It is not making the decisions for controllers. It's giving controllers suggestions, but the timing has got a lot of people talking about whether this could be a factor. Huge spotlight on that system, Tom, and just to put this all into context, something like this, I mean, a nationwide outage like this, a nationwide ground stuff like this has only happened a couple of times in the last generation. Yeah, that's right. So we all remember, well, those of us who are around, remember 9-11 and the national grounding that happened then, right?

7:48Then in 2023, we had a much shorter duration grounding, national grounding, because a computer system went down called the NOTAM, notice to airman system. That went down three years ago, but that was up and running within a few hours. This is now much bigger than that. Yeah, Tom Costello, thank you. And you're going to stand by and bring us anything you learn over the course of the next little bit here. Appreciate you. I want to bring in our Priscilla Thompson now, who's been at Houston's Hobby Airport for the last few hours. A mess, Priscilla. I have to think it's a lot of lines. It's a lot of frustrations.

8:18Just tell viewers, you were actually headed out to cover a different story for us. And you yourself got stuck at the airport, too. Yeah, I got here and my flight was delayed. And then as soon as we walked through security, you started hearing the announcement that this was a nationwide outage. I want to show you around at what's happening right now. So you do have the lines at the customer service counters with people. Some of them are rebooking flights. And in fact, some of them have been rebooked on flights for later tonight, though it's unclear if even those flights are going to be going out.

8:47You also have folks who are still waiting it out in the chairs. But you see, it's not we spoke earlier hi it's not as crowded as it was earlier and that might be because people are leaving but I do want to show you one other thing is you see these people I'm not sure if my producer here can get here and you'll be able to see these folks who are walking through that glass this glass area here they just landed so flights are still landing it looks like it's an international flight because they're going down to passport control now so flights are still landing here But, of course, none of them are taking off.

9:21And I will tell you some of what I'm hearing from the folks here. So, certainly frustration, some people annoyed at what's going on. But also, it's a nationwide outage. We know that it's due to some technology communications issues. And people want to be safe. So they'd rather be on the ground with something like that happening than in the air. I will tell you, the biggest piece of frustration that I'm hearing is from people who had connections. So they were able to land here. Now they have a connection. And so they're stuck here, and their luggage is stuck on the plane. So we heard an announcement that said there were 3 ,000 bags that were on the ramp.

9:53They were going to be releasing them as people's flights got canceled. But for people whose flights have not been canceled yet, they haven't really had a way of getting their bags. So that's been a big issue. And, again, I'll just show you, you would expect all of this to be crowded right now, but it has really cleared out in the last few hours. And a lot of that has to do with people leaving. We talked to some people who were saying that they were trying to get rental cars, but that the rental car suppliers were all out of rental cars. So they just tried to get Ubers or Lyfts or whatever they could to get out of here.

10:22But we've also spoken to people who had these big trips planned, right? They had hotels booked. They had several flights booked. And they're saying that because this is an FAA issue and not a weather or an airline issue, they're concerned that they may not be able to get their money back. We spoke to a man who was headed off on a trip to celebrate a 21st birthday. And, yeah, now they're worried about that. Yeah, no kidding. A lot of people's plans canceled. I should note, you heard Priscilla. We couldn't show your shot. It's frozen. You know, that happens, I think, when everybody's trying to get on their cell phones.

10:53Maggie Vespa in Chicago at O 'Hare probably trying to rebook, figure out a plan. People, I'm sure, are trying to get on the Wi-Fi to see what is going on. And I have to say, there's a lot of people still at the airport, I guess, holding out hope that maybe things will turn back on here? Hallie, holding out hope and or forgive my language, trying to get their freaking luggage because they're pretty sure they're going to be stuck here all night. And look how far back this baggage services line goes. This is a massive line here. The people in the orange vest here are gate agents who are trying to help people answer their questions about their bags.

11:27Maybe they don't have to wait in this horrifying line. People have told me after going through this line, I'm not saying this is everybody, but some have said they've been told, listen, your bags are checked. You're not going to get them back tonight. They're kind of lost in the underbelly of O 'Hare. So people here, though, keeping their fingers crossed. And that includes Don, who we met earlier. Hi. Good, good. How's this line treating you? Moving a lot better now. That's good. That's good. You told me that you've been in Chicago for work. You're trying to get home to Florida. What's the latest on your flight?

11:53What are you seeing on the apps? I just got approved to get on the 10.52 a.m. fight for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning. Instead of 4 p.m. Okay. This is a lot better for me and my family. Are you hopeful that this will be resolved by 10.50 tomorrow morning? Absolutely. You are hopeful. Very hopeful. Hopefully it gets resolved earlier than that. Have you been able to talk to those gate agents in Orange back there about your bag, or do you know what the deal is with your luggage? Well, I didn't get let off the plane, so I didn't even get on the plane yet, so I'm pretty sure I have to go here and just request my baggage.

12:23Okay. You know, I'm going to stay in a hotel about an hour away. And you checked it here. Yes, I did. Earlier. Yeah. What if they tell you, sorry, man, you can't get your bags back tonight? I was in the Army for a bit, so I'm not a tough one. Yeah. Last question for you, Nationwide Ground Stop. This almost never happens. How insane is this? This is very unfortunate. You know, the most important thing is that the Army family here gets home to their destination. So it's safe. Yeah. That's the most important. All right. Well, Army veteran, thank you for your service. We hope you get out of here. We hope you get out of here safely.

12:52We hope you get your bag. Sure. No days off. All right. Yeah, thank you. All right. I really appreciate it. So, Hallie, I mean, it's good to have an optimistic attitude, right? But just, again, if we could just show the length of this line, I'm going to walk backwards quickly. I know. God bless that guy's attitude toward all of this. But imagine being in this line. This is awful. This is absolutely a living nightmare. Everybody needs a little of that guy's chill. I wonder, look, what are the airlines? You know, we've heard now from the airlines, and they're basically, you know, I'm paraphrasing here, but they're kind of saying, hey, this is what's happening with the FAA.

13:21They're dealing with this downstream. I mean, I wonder if you can even rebook at this point. It's not even clear when planes are going to be, you know, going out again. So what are they going to rebook you on? Well, it's so true. I mean, we just heard from Don, right? He's rebooked at 1040 tomorrow, an improvement from being rebooked at 4 p.m. tomorrow. So he's like, you know, little victories. We did talk to a guy earlier. He was trying to fly to Philly. His plane was supposed to take off at 630 Eastern tonight. And at 430, he was like, well, that's obviously not going to happen. Two hours before his flight, it still hadn't changed.

13:54There was no delay. There was no cancellation. He's staring at the app. Finally, it was delayed, but 90 minutes. And he was like, It's clear, and this is his take on it. He told me the airlines don't even know how to manage this, how long this is going to last. I mean, all people want, Hallie, is literally any certainty, and it's nowhere to be found, clearly. Yeah, no kidding. Maggie Vestua, live for us there in Chicago. Maggie, thank you. Let me bring in our NBC News aviation analyst, John Cox, a veteran commercial airline pilot. John, we're so glad to have you with us, because help us understand inside the cockpit, you've flown a ton.

14:26Some 3 ,000 planes were in the air when this ground stop happened. when apparently this communications outage occurred with what are called these, I believe, air route control centers, right, traffic control centers that are for higher altitude. What does that mean when you're, you know, behind the controls of a plane and you can't communicate with those folks? Well, before you depart, you have a route clearance that you're issued. And there are procedures for loss of communication that all pilots know them. We're TRAINED FOR IT. SO YOU FLY THAT ROUTE AND THAT ENSURES SEPARATION FROM OTHER TRAFFIC.

15:00SO ALSO PILOTS GET TO BE PRETTY CREATIVE WITH THIS. THEY 'LL REALIZE THAT NOBODY ON THE FREQUENCY IS HEARING THE CONTROLLER AND THEN THERE IS AN EMERGENCY FREQUENCY YOU CAN TRY. AND IF YOU CAN GET HOLD OF ANYBODY, THEN THEY WILL GIVE YOU FREQUENCIES THAT ARE STILL OPERATIONAL. AND SOMEBODY WILL COME ON THE FREQUENCY AND SAY, HEY, THIS FREQUENCY IS WORKING, IT LETS EVERYBODY GO THERE. AND SO YOU 'LL RETUNE THE FREQUENCY. SO YOU 'LL TAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENT STEPS TO GET COMMUNICATION RE-ESTABLISHED WITH THEIR TRAFFIC CONTROL. ALSO, THERE'S A COUPLE OF WAYS OF GETTING DATA LINK THAT CONTROLLERS AND PILOTS HAVE.

15:44SO YOU'RE GOING TO BE TRYING THOSE THINGS. THERE'S A VARIETY OF WAYS. IT IS NOT AS THOUGH YOU'RE FLYING BLIND. THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE WAYS. I THINK THAT'S SO HELPFUL. I'M JUST CURIOUS, COULD PILOTS THEN BE ABLE TO TALK WITH OTHER PILOTS? IN OTHER WORDS, IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE SAYING THEY 'VE GOT TO KIND OF STICK TO THIS ROUTE THAT THEY 'VE BEEN CLEARED FOR. WOULD THEY HAVE COMMS WITH OTHER PLANES IN THE AIR THEMSELVES? OH, SURE. I MEAN, EVERYBODY ON THAT PARTICULAR FREQUENCY CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER. YEAH. IN SOME CASES, THAT BECOMES ITS OWN CHALLENGE. BUT THERE WILL BE PILOTS WILL BE TRYING A LOT OF DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES.

16:19THE ONE THAT YOU JUST LEFT IS CAN YOU GO TALK TO THEM? THE ONE THAT YOU KNOW IS COMING UP AHEAD OF YOU, CAN YOU TALK TO THEM? CAN YOU TALK TO ONE OF THE LOWER ALTITUDE SECTORS? AND SO, YOU KNOW, WITH TWO PILOTS, YOU CAN COVER A LOT OF FREQUENCIES PRETTY QUICKLY. AND SOMEBODY, YOU KNOW, YOU GO FIRST TO THE EMERGENCY FREQUENCY AND THAT'S GOING TO BE OVERWHELMED. BUT REPEATEDLY WHAT YOU'RE GOING to hear is, okay, this frequency, if you're in the Chicago area around Chicago O 'Hare, this frequency may work. And then you tune that up. And then at this point, it's not nearly as efficient, but it does work.

17:01Well, it's something at least. Let me ask you this. You've got a lot of time in the air. When you heard that this was happening, this nationwide ground stop and just how extraordinary it was. Tell me a little bit, what went through your mind? What was your sort of immediate suspicion? And what do you make of some of the information, limited as it is, that we've gotten at this point? Well, not only am I a pilot, I'm also an accident investigator. So from an accident standpoint, my first question is, what's common? Where's the commonality there? We build systems with a lot of redundancies. Where is this common single point failure that that affected not only one in route traffic control center, but several.

17:43And how can that be? That's the place that we need to find this common point and understand what happened there. But if we find that common point, then that's what to fix to get everything back up and online. This is going to take a while to sort through. It's gone on long enough and it's complex enough. This is going to go several days before the system is back to its normal state. Yeah, no kidding. And we heard Tom Costello, John, also talk about, you know, you have these crew limitations. They can only be kind of on the clock for so long, et cetera, just a massive domino effect. John Cox, we're so grateful to have you and your expertise.

18:21Thank you. We're also glad to have the expertise and reporting of our national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent, Tom Winter. Here's what this comes down to. It feels like, Tom, when it relates to the investigation into the cause. is this a massive tech malfunction? Is this something more? Is this potentially a cyber attack? We've heard from Secretary Mullen of Homeland Security who says at this point, there's no indication it was nefarious, but they're also not ruling anything out. That is correct, Tali. Nothing has been ruled out tonight. I mean, they're just trying to get their arms around this system.

18:52The enormity of the problem, of course, and the impact logistically, which is a big concern, and also on top of that, the impact that this will have in the days to come. As far as tonight, where this stands, the United States intelligence community has the ability to detect the type of suspicious traffic, the type of, whether it's some sort of a denial-of-service attack where you just flood Internet traffic at a particular device, IP address, or a port in an effort to just stop that piece of equipment's ability to communicate. They also have the ability to figure out if somebody is specifically targeting, pinpoint targeting, some of those systems.

19:31They're not seeing any of that at this point, we are told. And they would look for that from certain nation states. They would look for that from certain groups that are affiliated with those nation states and the hacking groups that would have the capability and ability to pull this off. Again, not seeing it. But there are other types of things that you could install. We were just talking about this on Nightly News, and I'll expand on it, which is a type of software, a malware that you could put in. And it's something called a zero day, meaning you have zero days to be aware of it before it actually attacks your system.

20:01Problem with that is those things are typically quite expensive and require the resources and capability of really some of the most sophisticated actors that we see worldwide. Again, goes back to my first point, not seeing that traffic. But those types of investigations, Hallie, well, that takes a little bit of time. So that's why they're not ruling anything out. That's why they're still taking a look at this. And that's why they have to investigate all sorts of angles. You know, they could be keying in on a third-party vendor, a company that provides a service to the FAA, and say, well, they were updating something, they were plugging something in.

20:34That's the reason why we have the problem. But we've seen some of the biggest hacks in U.S. history. Think about the attack on Target. It was a company that worked for Target, and I believe, if memory serves correctly, a HVAC company that did the air conditioning and ventilation work for those for Target, that they found a route in there to be able to target the payment systems at that store. This was back over a decade ago. So it just gives you a sense of how long it can take and kind of the sophistication that these actors do. But again, not seeing anything tonight that points to that, definitely not ruling anything out.

21:09Tom, no matter what it was, right, something like some sort of cyber attack, as you point out. No, we don't have any indication of that yet. Even if it was a tech malfunction, it reveals some kind of vulnerability in the system, right, more broadly in the aviation system. There's going to be economic disruptions from this. We don't know to what degree that's going to factor into how long this lasts. But it's certainly long term, once we get past this sort of acute moment here, shining a spotlight on what's clearly an issue. That's right, Hallie. And the human impact of this is huge beyond the economic, as you know.

21:45I mean, there are people that won't make it to a wedding tomorrow. There are people that won't make it to a funeral tomorrow. And that's very challenging or make it home for the birth of a child. That's the human toll of these lines that we've been looking at here. But from a standpoint of vulnerabilities, every time we seem to have one of these issues of critical infrastructure in this country, it exposes yet another link. And there doesn't appear to be much of a backup link. That's a question that's going on in the chats that I'm having on my phone. And so what was our backup system here? I mean, clearly, everything seems to be landing safely.

22:19There does not appear to be a threat to the flying public. Things or operations are continuing. We're seeing the great work of air traffic controllers themselves in making this happen. They're incredible at their jobs. And obviously, the teams on the grounds that have got to park all these planes and handle the logistics. But what was the backup system here? This could have been potentially quite challenging if there was a weather concern or there was an emergency on board one of these flights. So that's something that's going to need to look at. This current administration has been focused on upgrading, the FAA secretary, on upgrading the types of systems that they use.

22:56but they're upgrading systems not from like, you know, version 17 to version 18, but from version 1970 to version 20, you know, maybe 2005. Like we're just trying to keep up with some of the basics of technology. It's a challenge. Tom Winner. Thanks, pal. Appreciate you. And I know you're keeping an eye on all things, everything on this front. Let's take it back to one of the big airports tonight. You heard Tom talk about the human impact, right? People who have stuff to do, people who have plans trying to get to where they're going. I want to bring in Justin Lundy from our affiliate WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of our NBC stations there.

23:31Justin, you're at Raleigh-Durham tonight. Give us a sense of what you're seeing and hearing.

23:39Well, look, I've been here for a few hours or so. A lot of people are frustrated, but also I'm frustrated, too. I mean, I had to go through the TSA line earlier, and I also just want to point out to you guys that the only way that we could get into this terminal and up to these gates is by buying a flight. Let me show you this real quick. We actually bought a flight to JFK Airport. It's canceled. Canceled within the last two hours or so. And there's a lot of people that have been waiting here for hours just like myself. Hey, how long you've been here? I've been here since one o 'clock. So heading to Austin, Texas.

24:09But you also told me earlier that you were on the tarmac. Talk to me about it. Yeah. So we got on our flight and we were there for about an hour. The pilot let us know that unfortunately we weren't going to be leaving anytime soon. He didn't have any updates, but it's been about six hours. So what do you plan on doing now? I live here. I'm going to wait, but I've heard that most flights have been canceled. So I'm not too sure. I hope everything works out for you. Just like her. There's a lot of people that are trying to figure stuff out because they don't actually live in Raleigh. Look, I got one person right here.

24:39Hey, where are you coming from? We're heading to at least. Heading to Indiana. And how long you been waiting here? Four hours. Four hours. Okay. I've been here pretty much just as long as her right now. We also got somebody over here who's trying to get to Houston. Hey, coming back over here to you again. So you're in Raleigh. You're still trying to get to Houston, correct? Yeah. Right now we're debating if we're going to stay or if we're just going to go home. What are you planning on doing for the time being for, I guess, a place to stay overnight? Well, we live here, so we'll probably just drive back home.

25:12But like I said, we're very upset. We wanted to go to Houston. So, yeah, I don't know. And how many people are you traveling with? I'm just here with my friend right here. Have you ever seen anything like this happening before? No, this is the first time this has ever happened to me. I hope that everything works out for you as well. I also just want to point out that throughout the day, there's been lines that have gotten long. A lot of these people over here, this is the line for Boston, Massachusetts. They're trying to get over there. But as you know, of course, we have the nationwide ground stop.

25:44Many of them have told me that they are trying to reschedule their flights for the time being because they don't think they're going to be able to get on any flights overnight or into tomorrow morning. But I also want to point out that many people have told me that hotels in not only Raleigh but Durham are booked up. I spoke with one person who was trying to get to India to get a job tomorrow, and they said that they have to get a hotel room in Chapel Hill. That's how dire the situation is. But I'm going to keep you guys posted on how RDU is. A lot of frustration here, a lot of chaos, but for the most part, people are trying to stay calm.

26:16A lot of people are just trying to find hotels to stay in for the time being. But for now, reporting live from Raleigh, Justin Lundy, back to you guys. Okay, Justin Lundy, thank you very much. Let's head a little further south to Orlando Airport. That's where Patrick Perez with our NBC affiliate Wesh is now. Patrick, you know, it is notable to me, as annoying as this whole thing is, it does feel like from some of the live interviews we've seen that there's a sense of like, hey, we're kind of all in it together. There's nothing we can do. I'm heartened by some of the chill vibes coming from these folks who are just taking it in stride.

26:47I have to imagine, though, that there's also some real frustration, especially if you have a big event. I know one of our stations talked to a kid who was on his way to Disney, and that flight, you know, not going to get there when they expected to get there. Talk to us about what you're hearing at the airport, and also from officials, because one of the concerns as we move now into the evening, where are they going to put these planes on these runways.

27:12Well, one thing is for sure that we just heard from an airport spokesperson, maybe in the 30 minutes or so ago, who told us pretty much if you have flights here tonight or tomorrow morning, just stay home. Don't bother coming to the airport. Just stay home because, again, there are a lot of people here still waiting for their flight to take off. I mean, I want to show you the big board behind me and you can see what we're talking about here. We've got more than 200 flight delays here at Orlando International Airport, an entire sea of red there with delayed flight after delayed flight. And if you take a look over here, I mean, I've heard a lot of airport stories in the past 10 years of my career.

27:45This is the emptiest TSA line I think I've ever seen in my career. And there's a reason for this. I think a lot of people, hey, sir, I think a lot of people, they're staying home because they've been watching the news. They've been reading online that pretty much the airports are a mess right now. Their airlines are a mess. People are not able to take their flights as they're supposed to so they're sort of heating that warning but again airport officials here telling people to stay home and then confirm first with your airline before you head out here we do also have you know some people sort of hanging out here they have no other choice this isn't anything unusual we do see this uh you know every single day people sit out here before they get to through tsa and into their gate but we have spoken with some of the people here one of them i just spoke with about 10 minutes ago she just got off a cruise ship it was a disney wish they had a wonderful time.

28:31They had a flight that was supposed to take off at six o 'clock today. And then here we are. It's 727. That flight's not taking off. Now they're being told potentially tomorrow morning that the flight might take off at 630. They're supposed to come back to the airport around three o 'clock in the morning to confirm that any of that isn't happening. They told me that they're lucky in the sense that they're able to book at least two hotel rooms for the family that was traveling with them. But other people, we're not really sure what they're going to do. Some of them are obviously going to stay here.

28:57You know, maybe perhaps some of the people here that are sitting out here are camping out for the night just waiting to see what's going to happen because think about it you just spent a lot of money on your vacation and then now you've got a plan for some other hotel rooms that you weren't budgeting for. 100 percent 100 percent thank you very much for that we really appreciate that reporting live for us from Orlando thanks we're going to have much more on our special rolling coverage on this nationwide ground stop we are also following of course one of the few flights that did make it into the air today a rocket, the SpaceX launch, blasting into orbit.

29:29How exactly it managed liftoff right after this.

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30:10Oh, look, you just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting. ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting. And then another meeting. Hit your booking point, book with Southwest, and enter airplane mode. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like all I want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

30:55Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Back now with that special coverage of this nationwide ground stop. An extraordinary moment here with the FAA stopping flights all across the country. Planes cannot take off, except for a very few exceptions along the coast. It's all because of what the FAA is calling this communications issue. It's affecting certain air route control centers, essentially.

31:28These en route centers is what they're colloquially called that handle high altitude planes. Right. So planes, once they're up in the air, not taking off or landing. That's why we've been able to see some of these planes land. Now, despite all of this, one of the few things that did blast off into the sky today was a SpaceX rocket launch. launching the largest rocket ever built. Look at this. Here it is, lifting off from Starbase in Texas just after 545 Eastern. A dramatic moment for a couple of reasons. Our Gotti Schwartz is there. And one of those reasons, Gotti, is this split screen. You know, we just spent time covering all these people in airports.

32:04Their planes can't go anywhere. And yet this rocket can. It had special approval, I guess, previously, right before all this. It had special approval that It came down at the last minute. It came down at noon. And so, yeah, it was quite the split screen. In fact, this whole area was filled with people. And as soon as they started to hear about the ground stop, there was like this hush that went over the crowd. And everybody was wondering if that ground stop was going to actually affect Starbase, which is about five miles away. But we saw right at the exact time it was supposed to take off, it started to shoot up in the heavens.

32:35The only ground stop that's happening right now, hard to see in the dark, but there's a bridge on the other side getting out of South Padre Islands, of thousands of people that came out here, they are on, you know, gridlock traffic on the bridge. They had a full ground stop. But over across the bay, Hallie, we saw the largest rocket humans have ever built blast off into space. It was an earthquake. It was a man-made earthquake. You see a 40-foot skyscraper going up into space. And then about six minutes later, we saw, you know, I've got my toys here, but this is what we saw go up, right? And then we saw the booster part.

33:12This is the part that came back down. So we saw it come in. We were looking across the bay and we're like, that doesn't look like it's going to where the Mechzilla arms can catch it. It was off over the water. We see it hover for a little bit, and then boom, it explodes. We've looked at the video, and it exploded right about here. That's where the FTS is, like basically the system that they have explosions on board just in case something goes wrong, they can terminate the rocket and blow it up, and it actually implodes, and it's relatively safe-ish. Startled us, because when it blew up, it was so loud, set off car alarms five miles away.

33:50But that was the explosion that you saw. And we're like, why did it blow up? It looks like what happened is SpaceX wanted to make sure that they catch Starship. This is what the mission is all about. This is the historic part. They've never caught one of these before, and they didn't want to risk the catch site, possibly exploding early on. So they aborted the booster off the coast here tomorrow. 22 hours later after launch, 14 revolutions around us here on Earth. This thing is going to come back down, hopefully gently, and it will land right there at our base for the first time. This thing can take something like 100 tons up into space.

34:30IN THE PAST, WE 'VE BEEN VERY, VERY LIMITED IN TERMS OF HOW MUCH TONNAGE WE CAN PUT UP THERE. THIS COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING. HALLEY? GOTTY SHORTS. I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE OUT THERE, PAL. JUST REALLY AN INCREDIBLE MOMENT AND MORE TO WATCH ON THAT FRONT. APPRECIATE YOU. JUST AHEAD, WE'RE GOING TO GET BACK TO OUR SPECIAL COVERAGE OF THAT UNPRECEDENTED OR AT LEAST NEARLY UNPRECEDENTED FAA OUTAGE WITH PLANES PARALYZED ON THE RUNWAY AT THE TERMINAL. PASSENGERS WAITING FOR ANY WORD ON WHAT AWAITS THEM AND THEIR Plans for travel, chaos at some of these airports. So what are you supposed to do if you're supposed to get somewhere in the next day or so?

35:07We're going to break that down coming up in just a sec.

35:13Welcome back. As we track breaking news tonight, this extraordinary nationwide ground stop, paralyzing planes across the country here. Right now, yes, the majority, the vast majority of flights are grounded coast to coast. It's a total ground stop. Now, that said, on a case-by-case basis, it sounds like the FAA is allowing certain internationally bound flights on the coasts to take off. And that is presumably and probably because they end up with a different sort of communication system once they get into that international airspace. Take a look at airports. Boards looking like this. Watch this.

35:47Every flight. I mean, boy, what a mess. Canceled, delayed. Flights, you see, are still landing. The planes in the air are supposed to be getting down onto the ground. At its peak, there were 3 ,100, approximately, planes that were flying. They have been landing over the course of the last, let's say, three and a half hours since this ground stop has been in place. So many people stuck. Business trips, vacations, family travel, that is all ground to a halt. I want to bring back in now, bring in here Aaron McLaughlin, who's live for us at New York's LaGuardia Airport. And Aaron, this is a ripple effect, right?

36:22It's not just the passengers. It's also the crew members who are running out the clock, basically. They can't be working, you know, 24-hour shifts if they've been on for a bit. And then people who are trying to figure out, do they go home? Do they stay? Do they roll the dice? It's a mess. Yeah, that's right, Hallie. Here at LaGuardia, at least for this floor of this terminal right now, it looks pretty calm. But I can tell you down below where our cameras right now are not allowed, it is absolute chaos and confusion. A crowd of passengers trying to pick up their luggage, trying to figure out what to do next, asking airline counters for answers.

36:59There's the Uber line, which is super long at this point. Lots of folks just simply giving up and going back to home or their hotel. Left in limbo is passenger Merlene Mullings. Come on in here, Merlene. Merlene is trying to get to Orlando. She's waiting it out. Your reaction, Merlene, to the ground stop? What I mean, I guess it's safety. I'm assuming, you know, I'd rather be safe than sorry, but I really want to go party with my friend. My friend, I was going to celebrate her 60th birthday. So as of now, my flight has been moved from 8 o 'clock to 11.42. So I don't know what's going to happen.

37:35The woman said it's not canceled and I shouldn't leave, so I'm just going to wait around. How long have you been here? I've been here since 3 o 'clock. Because you were already facing delays, right, because of the weather. Right. So I came early, hoping to get on an earlier flight. That didn't happen. And then my flight was delayed till 8. than till 9.30. I know it's 11.42. So what are you going to do? I'm just going to wait. If they cancel the flight, then I'm going to try to join the craziness downstairs and try to get back to my car, which is at the parking ride. And if not, I'll just be here until I can make it home.

38:05Yeah. All right. Marlene, thank you so much. That just gives you a sense of the chaos and confusion here at LaGuardia. Folks simply do not know what to do next. When will this ground stop That is the question here tonight at LaGuardia and so many airports across the country. You know, it brings a whole new meaning to that old cliche, pack your patience. Aaron McLaughlin, thank you very, very much. You talk about stranded travelers. How about Rob Wilmoth, our next guest, on his way home to Raleigh when he got stuck on the tarmac in Minneapolis? Oh, Rob, I'm sorry. You know, at least you're off the plane, it looks like, right?

38:38What happened? Yeah, so I actually came in on a slightly delayed flight from Denver. and after running across the airport, they let me on the plane. And about the time I sat down, yeah, they told us that we were going to be sitting there for a while. So honestly, we got back off relatively quickly. Credit to the Delta employees that have been fantastic with giving us what information they do have. The downside is they don't have much. They've been telling you what? Did the pilot, did somebody get on the overhead and make the announcement? And have we been getting the phone alerts? Is it just kind of all of the above?

39:16All of the above. The downside is, as we've been hearing all day, the only real information is there's a ground stop. We don't really know why. I will say that there is a little bit of confusion because a lot of the boards here don't actually show anything other than boarding ending. Because a lot of these flights were in the process of about to go. And so a lot of the systems haven't updated to reflect the reality of what's going on. Like my flight from 2.30 this afternoon still shows on time, but then also shows like an 8 p.m. departure. It's a little weird. Yeah. Okay. So what's your plan then?

39:54What are you going to do? Well, I've got a hotel booked as a gusting case. And I'm going to stick around here for a couple more hours, see if I can go ahead and get the rest of the way home. because unfortunately as a business traveler, I'm supposed to fly right back out Monday morning. So I'm eventually going to have to decide whether I just go to my next location. How's the vibe amongst your fellow strained passengers? Honestly, it's pretty good. Everybody knows nobody here is at fault. Nobody here can necessarily do anything. I'm taking the tact of I've got a group of flight crew that's kind of over my shoulder here.

40:29When they start moving, I'm going to start moving. Well, that's one of the things you've been talking about on the air, Rob, is that some of these crew members, they're eventually going to, and if they haven't started already, run at a time on the clock. So it could be a domino effect. I have to ask, do you have a backup plan in case this thing doesn't resolve anytime soon? Are you renting a car? What do you think? I know that's a long drive. I've looked at it. It's about 18 hours. To be perfectly honest with you, my next week is back in Denver. It's a shorter drive to go back to Denver. So if it really comes down to it after the first wave of rental car usage pulls away, I'm probably going to just end up going back to Denver and start my week over.

41:10Okay. Rob, appreciate you keeping it copacetic. Thank you very much for talking to us tonight. Best of luck to you. Obviously, a lot of folks are hoping this gets resolved sooner rather than later. Appreciate you joining us. We're going to have a lot more coverage of this coming up in just a second as we are covering, of course, this ground stop nationwide. Nationwide, still in place. The cause unclear, some sort of a communications failure. We're getting into more on that coming up right after the break.

41:40Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins. Just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.

42:13Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting and then another meeting. Hit your booking point, book with Southwest and enter airplane mode. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like All I Want... Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what, forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

42:58Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. So one of the big questions tonight as we are seeing this developing news now, this nationwide ground stop coast to coast because of what the FAA has described as a communications failure among certain air route traffic control centers. The big question, why? What has happened here? We heard from the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen a couple of hours ago trying to reassure the American public.

43:36He said that this was not a nefarious attack. Tom, we got you live on the air, just FYI. And if I have, Tom, I'm not sure if we can go to you yet, but I hear you. We're talking about the big question is what happened? Why did this happen? Not nefarious, according to Mark Wayne Mullin, but I have to say he also was very specific in saying they're not ruling anything out at this point. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I was trying to get the control room's attention because control room, if you can, bring up the flight aware misery map live, if you can. Flight aware misery map live. I've never seen an image like this before, and I want to show it to you.

44:12So to answer your question, Howie, they believe that the issue has affected the frequencies used by controllers at very high altitudes. They think that there was maybe some sort of an issue with a router. Regardless, the issue seems to have spread. It started, we believe, according to one aviation source, it may have started somewhere in the Midwest and then spread nationally. So what is stunning is the number of never before have I seen a situation where at this point, most flights that are those those are the very few flights that are still in the air. Now, look, take a look at what you would expect if you can discern anything.

44:49It's pretty much flights leaving the United States. Right. Go look at the right. Those flights are outbound to Europe and on the left inbound from Asia, maybe a few outbound. But there's not a lot of traffic domestically in the United States because the FAA has issued this national ground stop, which is the biggest in scope and size since 9-11. There was another one in 2023, lasted a few hours. But this is really an amazing scene here. And what we're talking about is absolute gridlock at airports. I've heard you've talked about the problem that there just isn't enough space to put all these planes, park all these planes at various airports.

45:28They don't have extra gates. They don't have extra parking spaces. And in fact, one aviation source, airline source, is telling me, listen, we've got our flight attendants and our pilots who go illegal at a certain point. If they are on the clock too long, they must stand down, according to FAA regs. So they've got crews going illegal. They've got planes that are out of position, flights that are completely disrupted. And one aviation source says to me, we would not be surprised if you're going to start hearing about airlines simply shutting down tonight. Because so far, astonishingly, the FAA has not come out with a timeline or an estimate for when we might see this system getting up and running again, when they can fix it.

46:11We're awaiting a news conference from the FAA, from the DOT secretary and the Homeland Security secretary. Still no suggestion of a hack, no suggestion of terrorism, but we don't have a lot of answers, Hallie. Well, and we're closing in now, Tom, on four hours since this ground stop began. Can I ask you, I don't want to put you on the spot. I can't tell from some of the radar maps that we're seeing, the flight maps. Do we know how many flights now are currently in the air, or can we find out and come back maybe if we can? I'm just curious about that. There were 3 ,100. Yeah, go. I know. 3 ,100 more or less when we started this whole thing.

46:46And I don't have an actual real-time number of how many are up there now. But what I can tell you is that at the moment, in the United States, we are looking at, stand by, as I look at my FlightAware memory, my FlightAware map and the data. Delays in the United States, wow. We're at 9 ,800, but people are expecting that maybe the flight's going to take off. They're not going to take off. Cancellations right now in the United States, we're at 4 ,800. Combine those two numbers because nothing's going to move. you can see you're already up to, what, 14 ,000, 15 ,000 flights already that are going nowhere.

47:23And just to put that into context, Tom, we've gotten some monster snowstorms, bad weather, it's a major hubs. We don't, that's a huge number. Huge number. And of course, in the case of a snowstorm, right, that doesn't affect everybody in the whole country necessarily. In this case, everybody in the whole country. Now, again, some flights are leaving, but only those flights that on a coast, east coast, west coast, headed international, because they are very quickly picked up by different forms of air traffic control. It could be Nav Canada, could be Oceana Control. They're off of satellite communications as well.

48:00So they're not relying on the same kind of radio frequencies that they're relying on for domestic flights. And by the way, Canada apparently not having a problem because Canada is saying that they will assist however they can for U.S. flights. That's interesting. Tom, that's good intel. Thanks. Stay close to a camera, if you don't mind, as we are continuing to monitor all of this. In the meantime, I want to take you over to the White House with our correspondent there, Yamiche Alcindor. And Yamiche, we know that the president has been briefed on this previously, right? That's what Secretary Mullen said?

48:29That's right. And a White House official is also telling me and our team that he is being constantly updated on this situation. As you know, the Department of Homeland Security secretary came out to stress at the White House that this was not an issue that was a nefarious attack and that everyone is safe. He kept saying over and over again, this is not 9-11. So, this is an administration that wants to project calm. That being said, the president did speak to another reporter at another network and told him that this doesn't look like a cybersecurity attack, but that it could be because of old systems.

48:59We haven't heard anything else officially from the president, but we are continuing to press our sources here. But this is the White House, again, that is continuing to tell people essentially, don't be worried. Everyone is safe. And while this is still being worked out, They're still investigating the cause of all of this. And they also don't have a timeline for when this could be resolved. They are telling people to essentially stay calm. Yeah. Yamiche, thank you very much. We are going to sneak in one more very quick break. But stick around, because on the other side, we're going to get into more on that spotlight, on the AI tool that's been rolling out, the big spotlight there, and what else we're learning about this massive outage.

49:32Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

49:37Back now with our special coverage of this nationwide ground stop. We have more than 13 ,000 flights delayed and canceled right now. Airports across the country paralyzed. Planes sitting on tarmacs, nowhere to go. Some of these airports, we know Reagan National just outside D.C., O 'Hare near Chicago, about to hit capacity. They just can't take in any more incoming planes. At this hour, we know that planes can land, and we have seen a number of planes obviously land safely around the country, but almost nothing is taking off, with a few rare exceptions along the coast for international flights outbound.

50:14All of it's coming as there is an increasing spotlight now, and you heard a top Trump administration official talk about it just hours ago, on this AI tool that the FAA is rolling out. Our AI reporter Jared Perlow is joining us for more on that, along with Mark Rash, former head of the Department of Justice's Computer Crimes Unit. Jared, let me start with you on this program called SMART. It had been rolling out, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, airport to airport previously, but nationwide just this week. Exactly. Yeah, so we saw it go nationwide on November 10th, according to a statement posted earlier in the week from the FAA.

50:47Now, SMART stands for the Strategic Management of Airspace Routes and Trajectories. Doesn't really roll off the tongue there. Essentially, what it does is combine lots of different data streams about weather, about flight paths, about traffic flow, and even staffing metrics of control tower employees into one platform. The FAA says it centralizes around 200 different data streams. Now, smart is powered by AI. And this experiment, well, I don't want to call it an experiment now, but this program started as a pilot phase on September 21st, just in the DC metropolitan area. And when I actually spoke with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy back in the middle of September, they were just about to launch this program.

51:29And he said it would alleviate controller staffing shortages, and it would also help airlines save on fuel. Because just to provide a brief description, if you have five planes all approaching the same airport at the same time, maybe you wind up doing a loop or a circle in the sky to allow planes to slot in. With an AI-guided management system, you can better track and stack those sorts of approaches. That's at the heart of this program here, Secretary Duffy said that the program had saved around 10 minutes, 10.5 minutes on certain flights in that D.C. area pilot. Then, just a couple days ago, as you said, they rolled it out nationwide.

52:04And now this program, the SMART program, seems to be in active use at all 22 of those regional air traffic control centers that you mentioned before. And if my information is correct, that's also where we're seeing this sort of an outage. Now, I should note that the contractor responsible for this program, Airspace Intelligence, issued a statement about two hours ago on X, it said that its system was not the root cause of this incident. It said it nor any product of ASI was responsible with its integration with FAA and air traffic control there. However, I also do want to note that because the system was rolled out nationwide a couple of days ago, trusting the FAA at their word, then it was involved in some way in today's events, at least guiding planes as they tried to find an airport that could accommodate them.

52:49I want to stress also that there's so much we don't know about AI's involvement here. So I'm going to be tracking this certainly over the next couple of days. But of course, it's not too much of a wild leap to look at the dates of when this was rolled out on November 10th and where we stand today and think that there might perhaps be some sort of a connection. Jared, thanks. Mark, let me go to you on that and on some other fronts here, including what investigators will be looking at now as to whether this was a tech malfunction meltdown, whether this WAS SOMETHING LIKE A CYBER ATTACK? HOW DO THEY BEGIN TO DRAW THAT DISTINCTION?

53:23WELL, THE FIRST THING, OF COURSE, IS TO TRY TO KEEP EVERYBODY SAFE AND GET THE PLANES DOWN SAFELY AND SECURELY. THE NEXT THING, SO THAT YOU WORK ON OPERATIONAL. THE NEXT THING THAT YOU WORK ON IS RESILIENCE, MAKING SURE THAT YOU CAN BRING THE SYSTEMS BACK UP AGAIN SO THAT THEY WILL WORK AND FUNCTION. AFTER YOU 'VE DONE THAT, THEN YOU START TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE ROOT CAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENED. NUMBER ONE, TO MAKE SURE IT doesn't happen again and it's not an ongoing problem. If you find, then you're going to go back and look who had access to the system, whether the system was taken over by somebody else.

53:57You're going to look at forensic logs. You're going to look at audits. You're also going to look at threat intelligence. And this is where the intelligence community will come in as well. What are there people talking about attacking the systems? Who has the capability to do it? Who has access to the systems? But again, the most common factor that would cause something like this is going to be a software error, a communications error, a configuration error, something like that. But even if you figure out that it's a software error, those software errors can be caused by malware or they can be caused by malicious threat actors.

54:33I think it's hard for people. I wonder if it's hard for people, Mark, to understand, like, what could possibly trigger something like this? And I mean, you've laid out some of the options here. But you have to think, you know, we've had other aviation experts on just earlier in the show, I'm thinking of John Cox, who talked about there are redundancies in the system that are supposed to go into effect to prevent a meltdown like what we're seeing now. Clearly, there are vulnerabilities in the system that just haven't been addressed from just a straight up computer perspective. So typically, when you see this kind of a failure to this critical infrastructure, there are multiple things that went wrong, often things that you never thought could go wrong at the same time or in the same way.

55:15And lots of times that's because there are things that are dependent on each other. So when one thing goes wrong, it overloads something else, and then that thing fails, and then it overloads something else, and that thing fails. So the things that you think of as being independent of each other or even backups to each other end up being very dependent on each other, and one failure just cascades into the next and the next. Thank you very much, Mark, Jared. We're glad to have you with us. It's super important information. I want to go back to Tom because we're just getting in some developing news here, and we've gotten it from the White House already, Tom, as we know that the president's being briefed.

55:50He says no indication of a cyber attack. That's what he told Fox News, a reporter there. JetBlue is calling it. They're pulling it, right? They're saying no more. Everything's canceled tonight. I have to wonder, is this just the start? Will other airlines follow suit? Yes, and I kind of hinted at you with you on this point recently because I was hearing from airlines saying we're about to pull the plug for all the reasons we've already discussed. They just they don't at the moment. They are not seeing that the FAA has a solution. That's what the airlines are feeling. And as a result, they can't keep their crews grounded, their planes sitting there idling.

56:28They can't continue to inconvenience their passengers, making them wait. it's better just to say call it a night and send everybody home. Hallie, let's bring up now, that's file video, there's one flight leaving, a Lufthansa flight. That's kind of interesting, right? Is that file or is that live, you guys? Yeah, let me ask my team. It's live. Okay, that's interesting. So they're taking off from San Francisco, and, you know, we've seen if you're going to Asia out of the West Coast, if you're going to Europe out of the East Coast, those flights are flying. Interesting that they are lifting off from San Francisco.

57:00but I bet you they're going to hug. Is it possible they're going through Canadian? I was just going to say, yeah, you read my mind. I bet they're going to go right up through Canada and then over the Arctic top. Okay. Take a look at this. I have never before seen this, you guys. This is the flight aware misery map, and that is a lot of red misery. Every single airport is almost totally red. And you're going to say, wait, I see a little bit of green. Yeah. Okay. So chances are, I'm guessing those may be the handful of flights that are going to go international. You know, Chicago can go up out over Canada.

57:34You got JFK going out over the east coast. I'm sorry, over the ocean. But for the most part, that is a tremendous amount of red. Look at all those planes stacked up, wingtip to wingtip. As we've said, there aren't enough gates to handle all of the planes that can't fly that are at every airport. Pick the airport, same thing. I did a quick back of the envelope estimate here. If you've got 15 ,000 flights affected, that's about the number, more or less. All right, you're talking about 2.2 million people that are affected by this. You know, that's typically if you've got 150 average on planes, you know, some more, some less.

58:12At least, I'm thinking 2.2 million people affected by this. And now here's the big problem. Let's assume that they can actually solve this issue tonight and they say, okay, we can resume operations tomorrow. But now you've got every airport in the country looking like a parking lot. And you've got crews out of position, right? You've got passengers that may not be able, they may not be spending the night in the terminal. We just don't know. It's going to take, forget about your worst snow blizzard ever in terms of the ripple effect. This is going to take a long time. I'm thinking all weekend at least to unravel this mess.

58:51The only good news is that this is the low season for flying. It doesn't mean much if you're flying, but, yeah. We are now awaiting the potential for more from the Trump administration on what in the world is going on, as we're also getting, Jay, from—excuse me, Tom, from Jay Blackman, your producer who also covers aviation, word that, according to a source familiar, Southwest, to your point, is about to announce the cancellation of the rest of the evening schedule. And, you know, if you got a JetBlue flight, if you got a Southwest flight, get to the hotel, you know, have a glass of wine or a cup of tea or whatever, because you're not going anywhere tonight.

59:28And just to your point, Tom, the question of other airlines here, the other piece of it, and just in the 30 seconds we have left, your former CNBC hat, the economic disruption from something like this could be significant. Oh, absolutely. This is, you know, the airlines are not going to be responsible for you if you have to spend the night and you need a hotel and food. Maybe out of the goodness of their heart they'll give you a meal voucher. But they're not responsible for this. And you really can't blame an act of God. It's not the weather. So this is, you know, they're going to have to, these airlines are going to incur a very big cost.

1:00:00And you as the traveler are also going to have to be bearing a big cost here. And good luck trying to sue the FAA. that's going to be a one-way ticket to nowhere. All right, Tom, thank you very much. We're going to have continuing coverage here on NBC News. We're going to take a brief pause to let more viewers from our stations across the country join us.

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