Expert discusses Atlanta airport ground stop

Breaking news coverage from Fox 5 Atlanta of the National Ground Stop continues as you take a live look outside of... Some of what's happening or not happening. This is at John F. Kennedy International Airport up in New York. We're into deep now, a few hours into this national ground stop, and there's seemingly no end in sight. No end. A lot of people asking, what is the cause of this? What does the timeline look like? And ultimately, the ripple effects, we're trying to understand those. So Fox 5's Rob Duranzo joins us live in the newsroom to talk about some of these effects. All right, guys. It's certainly a very busy day. I've been monitoring air traffic control over at Atlanta. Still a lot of movement on the ground. We're not seeing any movement in the air at this point. Now, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, confirmed the ground stop was triggered by a temporary communication issue. Now, just to give you guys some context, this is only the third time this has happened in recent history. Of course, we've been talking about 9-11. There was also a NOTAM outage back in 2023. Now, a little while ago, I spoke with a retired Navy pilot who's Who's also a retired FBI special agent. Talked to him about the aviation aspect and the law enforcement aspect. He says this could take days to recover from. This is a major, major ordeal, basically shutting down the air system, the aviation system in the United States. All planes that are in the air will obviously be directed to fly to their destination. They'll be able to land safely. Pilots have backup communications methods. But there's some sort of communications failure that will go completely across the air traffic control system. And as many people know. The system that they rely on there, it's archaic. It goes back to the 80s and 90s, some very, very old technology. FAA, Air Traffic Control, Congress has been talking about updating it for years, but have not made any progress. And what's resulted now is in a multi-hour shutdown without a determination of when exactly it's gonna end. We did hear the Secretary of Homeland Security Talk about it in a quick press conference, he was asked if this was a cyber attack. He was unable to completely say no, that it certainly will be checked out. As many people may know, we've been attacked recently by Iran, Russia, North Korea and others. So that's certainly a potential. And of course, even something like, you know, the Microsoft After I shutdown over the last few days. So they'll have to identify where the problem is and work hard to get the air system back up and running. But the more hours that go with the shutdown probably means the more days it'll take to get it back up and running. And how unusual is this for the entire air traffic system across the country to be shut down like this? Well, just a little research shows that this is only the third time in history that it's happened. Obviously on 9-11, but that was a different set of circumstances where We're those remember that airplanes were actually being used as missiles or bombs to attack buildings things. In 2023, there was another communications failure that shut down the air traffic control system for a limited amount of time and that caused chaos back then. And now again here on November 13th happening again. And if you could give us a glimpse into the aviation world right now with pilots and everything, I imagine there might be a level of panic, the fact that this could happen to this system in the first place. Well, pilots and air traffic controllers and and other people have been complaining about this system for years. Again, it's archaic. I read recently, and I'm not even sure all your viewers will understand this, they just finished using floppy disks in computers at air traffic controller not too long ago. So that's just beyond belief. And replacing the system will take years. Just a couple days ago, I had a press conference about a new system. That they're designing an AI-based system sounds fabulous, but it's not like just going to the store and buying a new laptop, bringing it home, plugging it into your internet, and you're ready to go. Congress hasn't funded this, it hasn't been tested, hasn't been implemented. So even if everything went right and the money showed up and they love the system and they started to put together, it would still probably take a couple of years to get this in every air traffic. What, just from a law enforcement, FBI perspective, what's gonna be looked at in terms of possible sources of this, including again any potential bad actors, like you said, The possibility of a cyber attack or this being a terrorism. Well, you can expect the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and others jumping on this right away to see if there is any possibility that this was a cyber attack on our system. Certainly with the ongoing conflict in Iran, and they are threats that they've made to attack us wherever they can. We've seen issues where they talked about threats against US aircraft that were stationed in the UK. And this is an ongoing issue for For the U.S., and this is just something else that's happened, you know, on this Friday, the 13th, to see what actually happened to the air traffic control system. They're going to have to, it just makes common sense, they're going to have to turn over every rock, you know, and check everything to see what could have happened. And hopefully, at the end of the day, it's just a breakdown of technology in the U.S. system and not something more nefarious than that. But you said it will likely take days for normalcy to return once it's restored. Oh, yeah. Pilots have flight days where they can only fly so many hours. Planes get out of position. Cargo is out of position. There's a nor'easter coming up to the northeast. The weather alone would have caused delays. So pilots will time out and flight attendants, air crews will time out in their places that they're at if they're sitting there for four, six, eight hours. So now you've got to find a whole new set of pilots or a whole A whole new air crew, the airplanes are out of position. It's just gonna be a mess. Anything else folks need to know tonight as they're processing this as we're watching and waiting for developments, either from a law enforcement perspective or from an aviation perspective. Well, from a law enforcement perspective, we're gonna see what happened. Hopefully we'll get some news or some information from the government in the near future that they can say it wasn't an attack. But we'll have to wait to get that definitive statement from them. But for travelers, for flyers, your planes that are in the air, they're gonna land safely. Traffic system will clear out very quickly. If you're not taking off, it doesn't take but a couple hours to get airplanes out of the air. I actually live in the Washington, D.C. area, just under the Dulles airway here, where I can see planes all day coming and going to Dulles. And over the last couple hours, it's been pretty quiet. And there you have it, Rich Kolko, who's a retired Navy pilot and a retired FBI special agent. His characterization of all of this is it's just going to be a mess, and it could be a mess for a couple days until things can return to normal. He said, again, how unprecedented this is, and really everything's on the table in terms of the source of this right now, guys, whether this was something malicious or just a complete breakdown. He talked about how they're using such antiquated technology even still to regulate and to control. Yeah, but he really put that mess into perspective, Rob, saying that it's going to start in the airport, then it's going to hit rental cars, then it's going to hit hotels, pilots, staffing, positioning of aircraft. I mean, we're talking about something that's going to take... Days, if not upwards of a week, to straighten out. Crews aren't in the places they need to be for the next succession of flights. A ripple effect that is already causing massive headaches. Rob, thanks. We're waiting on the president at the White House. We see a podium shot as we take a live look at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where that line you see there on the left-hand side of your screen has only grown through the night. Our breaking coverage continues here next.