Aviation, tech experts discuss FAA national ground stop chaos

Look, from Flint Bishop Airport to McNamara, the whole state of Michigan, the whole country right now, frozen when it comes to these flights. The next update is supposed to come down, they say, at about 11 o'clock. So that's, what, about four and a half hours from now, hoping people will hear something better than what they've heard already, which is, hey. We got nothing. Back in 2003, there was something that similarly happened with a program called NOTAM, another communication issue. There was a ground stop for about 90 minutes, much smaller than what we're dealing with here. The last time something this major happened was 9-11. Of course, officials in Washington saying, you know, we don't want to jump to those conclusions. Very different set of circumstances at this time. And urging caution when asked earlier if this had anything to do with AI, which is, of course, a hot topic everyone's talking about, especially this. This week, federal officials, they couldn't rule that out at this point. And we have not heard any updates in the last. Hour and a half or so from Washington about any updates at all, only that this set of circumstances, we did have some parameters that maybe this would all be figured out by 10, 11 o'clock tonight. That has since been removed, and it's until further notice, which isn't good to hear, especially for the passengers that we've been talking to and hearing from, some of them being told by the airlines to stay at the airport or lose your place in line. Amy's staying there at the Evans Terminal at DTW. It's going to get busy. It's going to get real busy beyond those TSA checkpoints. Extraordinary circumstance is what they're calling it right now. And we're talking to Evan Broad, our pilot here and our expert. He says that that is something that is noteworthy as well. Fox News' Dave Kinchin is live at the McNamara Terminal where he got there about an hour and 10 minutes ago. And you've been there talking to a lot of people who are frustrated. What's the situation on the scene? Are people going home? How are they reacting to this situation? Obviously having an audio issue there as well. Live pictures from the airport as we work on his mic. You can see right now the situation there. People are looking at their phones. This is the scene across the country. If we can go back to that picture from Dave, people are literally burying their faces in their phones to try to figure out. What it is that's happening here, and if they can actually get a flight coming out of here. And it did look like it was thinning out a little bit behind Dave. And maybe it's people going through TSA, taking the gamble, taking their chances, or if it's people packing up and going home. We talked to Evan Broad a little bit ago about this, that the trickle-down effect. So what's going to happen is these runways, these tarmacs are going to start to get kind of crowded. Explain that process for us if people are watching Fox Local stuck on a plane right now. Yeah, so what's going to happen is obviously the gates that are open are going to be taken. Thank you. Plethora of other options. They could fill up taxiways, runways, things of that sort. We're looking at the FlightAware map right now. This is a live map of what's happening across the country right now. You'll see where everybody is essentially sitting in place, grounded, because people are landing, but they're not able to take off. And so you're seeing still some activity at these airports with people landing, but not taking off. And Evan, as you join us and talk about perspective here, I wanted to ask you about specifically This particular computer system and how critical it is, you're saying this is kind of the go-between between all the big flights and all the systems that are coming in to the local airports. So it's an artery of sorts of information. Absolutely. It's super important because you're taking aircraft that are at cruising altitude and you're connecting them to the people who control the airports. So you're the middleman in between both of that. If that doesn't work, you don't have a system in which you can land or take off. That is correct. Now, obviously, all the pilots, they do train for scenarios like this. There are ways they know which type of procedures to fly, the type of arrivals, the type of approaches to fly, and then when to connect over to that local controller. But everything is planned out in case something does go wrong. And the fact that we have not heard of any It does indicate that they did have either some warning or some control over what was about to happen and the fact that they were still able and still are able to land planes. Yeah, fortunately, don't expect anything to go massively wrong there. These aircraft have many systems on board that will prevent mid-air collisions. But even before it gets to that point, these pilots are well trained in what they're supposed to do. They are able to deal with a situation like this. If an aircraft is supposed to come back into Detroit, they are able to get into Detroit. They know what they're supposed to be doing. Joining us now is David. He's one of the passengers that we've been talking to tonight. David, you're on live with us on Fox 2. You were on your way to D.C. and on your way there, you learned, of course, about what the whole country and the whole world is talking about. Tell us what the situation is now. You know what, currently from inside the terminal, a lot of flights have had their bags taken back to baggage claim. So it's clear that they're canceling some flights that are going out tonight. I wouldn't say it's across the board. I'm still looking and a lot of people staring at their laptops, a lot of people grabbing pizza and maybe a beer while they wait for a final update. But Again, it's still pretty chill, as I said before, people are understanding this scenario. Go ahead, Jessica. And Dave, as you wait this out, is that your plan is to wait this out? Because now we're hearing it may not be wrapped up and buttoned up by this evening. That's a big question because we've heard some conversations going on with regards to flights might be out by midnight. The airlines we're on Delta are sending out an update every half hour saying, you'll be gone by land by 1030 or what have you. There's a lot up in the air still, but I'm watching hundreds of people right now, as I said in the terminal and they're just kind of being patient. It's It's an understanding scenario, you know, it's not like a pilot's late, it's not like this weather not letting us get into Des Moines or what have you, so, you know, it's a wait you and watch, clearly. You know, David, it's interesting because there was a time maybe 20 years ago where very if this was happening, you'd see the ticket counters slammed with people asking questions, but now the answers to their questions are sitting right on their phone, and as you say, much. they have nothing to blame really at that airport, but a circumstance that's really beyond everyone's control. You know, one of the things I'm really impressed by is that a few minutes ago, we saw one of the pilots coming out of the tarmac or whatever, whatever it's called, you know, and some of the flight attendants are actually talking to people. So, you know, there's communication going on that, you know, like you said, back in the day, wouldn't happen. Everyone would be stomping their feet. I know we have a lot of important information we want to get out there, but I do want to ask you from the human perspective, like you have your daughter's event that's coming up in D.C. Are you going to leave the airport at some point tonight? What's your plan? Yeah, the game's 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for asking. We're looking at all sorts of scenarios where do we drive? Do we rent a car? Do we, you know, cross our fingers and hope for the best? You know, given that Internet thing, we can always watch the game. It's better to be there in person and, you know, roar the crowd and smell the paint. So it's literally minute by minute, hour by hour, and we'll make a decision before too long. Well, David, keep that phone charged. We might want to check in with you again in the next few hours. Thanks for your time. We'll see if we're here in a few hours. All right, guys. Best to you and your daughter and your whole family. Yeah, it's just sad seeing all those personal stories coming out of this. It's not just necessarily a vacation. Some people are going to see family, those Lions fans that we've been running into, spending thousands of dollars on tickets. It's not one of those things where you can say, oh, we'll do it in a couple weeks. It's now or never. And the flight, of course, you can work on credits and do all kinds of stuff. But you're talking about you're down $3,000 or more in some cases. So obviously, situational We're watching. Joining us now is a familiar face, Joe Tavares. He's a tech expert. I want to kind of get your gauge right now. We're hearing about what's happening here. What do you make of this outage? So obviously it's still developing, so I have about as much information as anybody right now. But this reminds me of a time a couple years ago where the NOTAM system went out, and that's like pre-flight. Pilots basically couldn't get their paperwork done, so they grounded all the flights. I'm not sure exactly what's going on right now, but I do know that they were upgrading some systems in the last 24 hours. Microsoft was having some outages in the last 24 hours. It kind of all seems related to me. It's Friday the 13th also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that as well. But when you start to talk about conspiracy theories and things being linked, is there such a thing as coincidence when you're talking AI, when you're talking tech, when you're talking these big, large-scale systems? I think coincidence is certainly still a thing because, as you said, these are large-scale systems. It's not really predictable. I think AI plays a part in it because folks like me are getting more ambitious with the things that we want to do and we're trying to do. So we're moving a little bit faster and breaking things, as Mark Zuckerberg likes to say. And I feel like that's just a symptom of the society that we're in right now. From a computer expert point of view, what is being done at this hour from the federal level with people like you who are looking at this system to try to rectify the situation? There are folks that have most likely been up for the last 24 hours trying to get ahead of this because usually when a system this large goes down, it starts slow and kind of goes faster and faster until it kind of hits a breaking point. I would assume at this point basically everybody involved in that IT department is on call right now and frantically trying to get things back online. Again, if it's related to some of the Microsoft outages. They're reliant on Microsoft's engineers who are doing the same thing. I don't recommend buying stock, but Red Bull is probably really popular right now in those rooms. But Evan, is Microsoft, I mean, is that tied? You know the computer systems. Is that something that's tied together with the flight system here? Not that I'm aware of. Obviously, as they do bring in more and more AI, it's definitely possible, which depending Depending on the provider they're using, but not entirely as I know of. And when you look at this from a very technical perspective, how big of an issue is this to get it back up and running? Are we talking hours, days, weeks? At one point we heard, okay, 10, 11 o'clock, we'll have things kind of buttoned up. It doesn't look that way anymore. Without being too familiar with the system, it really depends. If they have a good backup, if they're able to bring it to stability for a small number Number of users and then spread that out or if they have to bring it up for everybody all at once. Obviously, there's a lot of scheduling involved. You have a lot of different locations. It's an older system, so the replication where they're copying data across different locations, that could take a while. So again, speculative at best, but I would say at least a couple hours. But if they had a backup, wouldn't that backup have kicked in? Is that what a backup is for in a situation like this? Well, a backup is so that you can bring it back up from cold. So if it goes all the way down, you have a way to bring it back online. It's not necessarily something you can just swap over. You still need the computation there. You still need the RAM. And when you look at this, again, speculation at best at this point, but does it look like a failure internally or does it look like someone did something here? I would say that this is kind of indicative of like a systemic failure. I think we've under invested as a society in these systems because they've worked well. We choose to pay extra money towards something else rather than upgrading, rather than maintaining. A lot of folks are invested in the system that they've built, so they're not necessarily apt to jump to a new opportunity, to jump to a new system. Again, AI is making us more ambitious, but that does come with risk, and I think we're seeing that in real time.