Atlanta traveler stuck until Sunday for flight

We heard a rumor about a delay. Thank you. I've been told ground stop everything, so give me just a minute, trying to up here, figure out what's going on. A live look at airports across the country tonight. Planes are slowly moving again following a nationwide ground stop that lasted for more than four hours. Right now, federal officials are blaming old equipment. And pushing for billions of dollars to replace it. But travelers who've been stuck for hours just want to get to where they are going. Unfortunately, that might take a while as over 8,700 flights across the country are now delayed. Several thousand others are canceled as airlines are trying to get back on track tonight. Our coverage of the nationwide FAA ground stop continues tonight at 10. Thanks for joining us. I'm Courtney Brand. And I'm Russ Spencer. The good news, the FAA says the air traffic control system is working again. Again, federal officials say they ground Grounded all flights nationwide this afternoon because of a telecommunications outage and radar instability. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen said the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system overwhelmed it. More than 3,500 planes were in the air at the time. Federal officials claim no one was ever in any danger. I just want to reiterate this. The public was never at danger through this process. There was never any lives at risk, there was no flights at risk, FAA was able to handle it, we did it out of an abundance of caution, but I do understand the internet traffic and where all these conspiracies start running towards, I just can't say this enough. All your loved ones are safe. We are working to resolve the issue. And we hope to have operations up and going normal at some point. Now, while federal officials can't rule out a cyber attack, they say they don't think that's what happened here. They also said today's FAA issues are not connected to yesterday's Microsoft outage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy used the news conference to once again push Congress for $50 billion in funding to finish updating our nation's air traffic control system. All right, now let's get to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport where there are lots of unhappy travelers tonight. Understandably so. Fox 5's Christopher King is there and has been hearing from travelers. Christopher? Courtney, Russ, I want you to take a look out over here. This is the scene right now. We're in the checkout area on the north side of the domestic terminal. It is easing a bit, but it's still crowded. Just look at how long this line is. These passengers are trying to come in. They're trying to check in. Some, their flights were canceled. Others, long delays. All trying to rebook. It looked like a regular evening Friday night when we first got here this Not anymore. The airport is crowded with passengers just stuck here. Many of them have been here almost all day. They have no idea when they'll be able to take off. The nationwide ground stoppage now lifted. Flights can resume. But now the ripple effects. A sea of passengers still waiting to find out when they'll be able to fly. Why is that? Still a log jam from all the flight delays. The ground stoppage. Lasted for hours. That means major cancellations and delays that dash travel plans for passengers. We spoke with one woman who was flying to New York for her aunt's 85th birthday. She says she won't be able to make it back. We spoke with a family taking their teenage daughter on a cruise for her first birthday. For her birthday. Those plans are dashed. And we spoke with a woman who came from New Orleans after celebrating her birthday. She's stuck here for a while. We're now talking with passengers live here now with this gentleman right over here. Sir, what is your name? Nick. And what's your last name? Nick Four. Where are you flying from? Where are you going to? I'm supposed to be flying from here to Dallas, but my flight got delayed, then it got canceled. Now I've got to book an Airbnb for the next couple days until I can... My flight is going to be Sunday now, so I've got to stay in here for two days. And so how long have you been waiting for your flight? Three to four hours. And what is the airline telling you now? The airline just told me that they was going to rebook it for Sunday, so I've kind of got to stick around Atlanta for the next two days until Sunday for my next flight. And that's real frustrating because I was supposed to be to work Saturday. Now I've got to take a day off, and I probably ain't going to be there back to work until Monday. And you've mentioned this before, but how frustrating is this all for you? It's real frustrating because it puts a lot of delays on stuff I've got to get done, the stuff I've got to take care of, my money flow. It just impacts me a lot. Now, there was a ground stoppage that lasted for hours. It's been lifted. What goes through your mind when you think about that? Oh, frustration. Frustration, irritation. They did it as soon as I got to the ticket counter. I was the next one up, and they shut it off. So it was kind of gut-wrenching. And now you have to stay here in Atlanta for a couple more days. For a couple more days. We're sorry about that. Good luck to you. Thank you. Okay, let's come out here back again to some of these lines over here. You can see there are still passengers out here. Some are waiting to rebook. Others, their flights were canceled. Others' flights were delayed. The FAA says communications issues affected all air traffic control. They say that is to blame. So why did this happen? The FAA says the system is old. It got overloaded. The FAA says no lives were at risk. We just heard from an employee for Frontier Airlines. She told passengers the first flight will take off at 1 a.m. Sounds like not too long for now, but when you've been waiting all day, that is a really, really long time. We are live at Hartsfield-Jackson, Christopher King, Fox 5 News. Wow. Hearing from that man caught in the middle of this nightmare. I mean, your heart really goes out to people who are caught in the middle of all this, Christopher. I can't imagine how people might feel if they have a flight going out maybe tomorrow morning. You would have to imagine that this will have a ripple effect not only into tomorrow, but the next few days. Oh, yeah, it's having a ripple effect. Like that gentleman just said, you know, he has to rebook, and he'll be waiting here in Atlanta for a couple more days. He was going back to Dallas, but not so much now because he'll be waiting. Now, we also spoke with some other folks who said that they are having to either go back home to their family's places, go back home to their own places, book hotels. One family told us when they checked for hotels earlier in the day, there were maybe a couple hundred bucks. But now they said, like, Over $700,000. They also told us that they were checking the rideshare apps. But those prices are going up also. So you're seeing ripple effects all around. Not just in the airlines, but for prices for hotels. Hotels being crowded and being booked. And for rideshares and taxis. Those prices are going up as well. Of course, people are still going through TSA. Because flights are now... The ground stoppage has been lifted, but people are flying again now. But it's going to take a while for the kinks to unravel. Are people expressing any concern about the safety of flying, Christopher? I ask because the transportation secretary said, you know, it's old routers. Decades old routers were overwhelmed. Well, they're still going to be part of the system tomorrow. And he did not give any assurances that this won't happen again. Yeah, I'm not sure that people are even aware of that, and the people I spoke with were not mentioning anything about safety. I think their focus is in just trying to figure out what they're going to do tonight. Are they going to sleep in the airport? Are they going to get a hotel? Do they have friends or family to stay with? I think right now, the first and foremost thing on their mind is, when are they going to get out? Yeah, understandable. I mean, just looking at those lines behind you, it just is not, it's not an enviable position to be in. I'll put it that way. Christopher, thanks. And we do want to give you some perspective on just how big of a mess this is sure to be for several days. Fox 5's Rob DiRienzo has been tracking the fallout. This is only the third time in history the nation's airspace was completely shut down. That's right, Russ. The third time in the nation's history completely shut down. One of those instances, of course, was 9-11. I spoke with a retired FBI special agent who is also a pilot in the U.S. Navy. He says this is likely going to be a mess for days to come. 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. Shut down 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 Even something like, you know, the Microsoft. Shut down 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 it shut down 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 those remember that airplanes were actually being used as missiles or bombs to attack buildings. In 2023, there was another communications failure that shut down the air traffic control system for a limited amount of 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 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 the 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 Um, for the U S and this is just something else that's happened, uh, you know, on this Friday, the 13th to see what, uh, actually happened to the air traffic control system. They're going to, they're going to have to, it just makes common sense. They're going to have to turn over every rock, uh, you know, and check everything to see what could have happened to the, and hopefully at the end of the day, it's just a, uh, 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 going to 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 going to see what happened over, 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. from them. But for travelers, for flyers, your planes that are in the air, they're going to land safely. The air traffic system will clear out very quickly. If you're not taking off, it doesn't take but a couple hours to get the 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 guys, it's important to note that that interview was still while the shutdown was still ongoing, but a lot of the points he made about the system being antiquated and the restoration timeline, I think, very important information to keep in mind there. Now, as for this moment, the average for both delays, both inbound and outbound at Atlanta are sitting around 90 minutes, but that could fluctuate, of course, throughout the night. Yeah, not to mention the people who were waiting in line to even try to get to the front of the line to talk to someone to see about their flight that's been canceled or delayed. But interesting how he explained it and also acknowledging the Microsoft outage. I know a lot of people have been talking about that. And that was something that Secretary Sean Duffy said right off the top of that news conference, saying that. They're ruling that out as having a connection to this. Of course, and cyber security is going to be an ongoing conversation in all of this. If it wasn't a cyber attack, as the White House has so far suggested, the question becomes, how can these systems be improved? So something like this doesn't happen again on Friday night. Yeah, well, Secretary Duffy laid the blame at the feet of Congress, which has been under the control of. Of the Republican Party, as has the White House for the last couple of years, he said it has to be a bipartisan solution. Yeah, and you heard that former Navy pilot talk about that, and that this is a well-known problem within the aviation community, how antiquated, how dated, and how clunky this entire infrastructure is that keeps our airspace, or is supposed to keep our airspace safe. Yeah, has a lot of people asking new questions just before the huge holiday travel rush. Right, yeah, of course. Not great timing for all of this. Rob, thanks. Well, even though things are moving once again, travelers are still understandably frustrated. Our Hernan Gutierrez caught up with one traveler who says she was moving until suddenly she wasn't. I was supposed to fly out like at 3, 3.30, I think. We were supposed to fly out from Frontier on, It was a Frontier flight to Orlando. We were literally starting moving the flight. We were on the plane, started moving, and then he like stopped and said, Hold on, like something's happening. And then after that, he was like, Hold on, we don't know what's happening. We're just going to sit put for a while. And then three hours later, we're still sitting on the plane. And then we would finally deboard like maybe four hours later. And then they said it was canceled. Yeah, she says while the whole experience has been frustrating, she's just grateful nothing happened while they were in the air. She says Frontier refunded her flight and gave her her money back. And in a statement, Atlanta-based Delta Airlines says it's offering travel waivers to customers affected by the delays. That means travelers can change their flights at no extra cost. Delta also reminded customers that when a cancellation happens, Delta automatically rebooks customers to the next best itinerary. All right, we'll have more on what happened today here at Hartsfield Jackson Airport and across the country when we come back. Things are finally moving after an hours-long FAA ground stop. That's a live look at Hartsfield-Jackson tonight. White House officials are blaming old infrastructure, saying their analog equipment failed, leading them to shut the system down. The White House also once again called on Congress to fund repairs to the air traffic control system. Well, there are a lot of frustrated travelers at airports across the country tonight trying to figure out what to do now. And earlier on Fox Local, we spoke with an aviation attorney who gave us some perspective on what the hours and days ahead might have in store. This is a very delicate system we have with interlocking air traffic control facilities across the country. There are air route traffic sectors such as Atlanta and New York, and they encompass wide swaths of airspace. And to go through the airspace you have to talk to air traffic control and it appears that the Kansas City air traffic control center has lost communication capability which happens to be right in the middle of the country and so the result is because of the interconnected interconnectedness of our network that the AT systems Air traffic control system is effectively shut down right now. So, Alan, real quick, Alan, you don't see any connection because there's a lot of people and it's buzzing online with the big Outlook email breakdown yesterday. Now you have the FAA breakdown. These things happening sequentially, you see no connection, no nefarious involvement by outside players. You're just attributing this to an antiquated aviation system. That would be my first premise, my first assumption, yes. Prior to going on the air this evening, I did speak with a colleague who administers the flight operations of about 30 jet aircraft worldwide, and they do some work for the military. And you would think that there is something up that they might know, and they don't know anything. So I did try to find other sources that might suggest what this is other than just an Outage in the middle of the country with ATC. Now, we know the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has been basically on bended knee with Congress begging for funding to update the antiquated air traffic control system. How long, if they get the funding they need, and we hear about floppy disks going in to control things like dating back to the 1980s or even before that. How long before our air traffic control system is going to be up to par? We deserve better. I mean, we really do. A country this advanced deserves better than what we're getting. So how long would it take? Look at the government. Look how slow the government is to move in government bidding processes and the lowest bidder and that sort of thing and disputes about who won the bid. I mean, this could go on for years. Mr. Armstrong, I'm curious, as you've been looking at a situation like this, you know, we've, it makes us compare to previous situations, right? And it makes us think about other times we've been in situations like this. And your memory and expertise, what do you compare this to? Are there other situations that come to mind that kind of characterize this magnitude of an event when you think about the ripple effects that this is going to have for days to come? To say the effects will be extraordinary will not be an exaggeration. This is a really big deal. You've got thousands of airplanes that are... Airplanes fly more than they are on the ground. They're flying most of the time. So they're suspended in space and they're involved in this elaborate dance where airplanes fly in close trail to each other with... Three to five miles of lateral separation. And now they're all just on the ground. Yeah. How long before, Alan, okay, so we get everything straightened out. Airliners start taking off once again. How many days or upwards of a week is it going to take to straighten this thing out and return to normal? Yeah, four, five, six days a week. This is a huge, huge problem. You know, to get this system back working again, Thank you. the sheer inertia we have to overcome to get it back up and running is going to take quite some time. People are going to be very disappointed. Sums it up. And here's a live look at the so-called misery map from FlightAware.com. This is showing the delays, the cancellations at 1,493 flights canceled across the country. Over 1,600 have been delayed. We're monitoring the after effects of this nationwide shutdown that lasted over four and a half hours. We'll be right back. A live look at Hartsfield Jackson Airport, where the biggest story of the day was unfolding with all this. The planes being stopped there and across the country on any other day. The weather might have been the top story given how... Much it has changed in a big hurry. Yeah, a dramatic cool down tonight as we can see a plane taking off a welcome sight to people who are waiting for flights there at Hartsfield-Jackson. But let's bring in meteorologist Marquise Mita to talk about this cool down. Marquise, yesterday felt like fall and today it feels like winter. Yeah, we are changing seasons abruptly here across North Georgia. Nice to see that planes are beginning to take off. What's not so nice to see this number right in front of you. 41 degrees. That's what's waiting for you as you step outdoors and take a look at the difference that 24 hours can make. Already 10 degrees cooler than we were at this point in time moving across the evening yesterday. The reason why is that we watched not one but two frontal boundaries sweep across your late workweek forecast and because of that We are cool and breezy. Winds are coming in from the north and the west at 12 miles per hour. And that northerly component has us all in the 40s and some of us down in the 30s here just before 1030. Blue Ridge, Clayton, I'm looking at you guys. 39 degree temperatures. And even further south, typically these communities are some of our warmest. But LaGrange, Thomaston, you're back down to 37 degree temperatures. So it's no surprise that we do have freeze and frost alerts in place. Basically, once you move north of I-85, that's where you're going to go into the freeze warning territory. With temperatures dropping below 32 degrees tonight, Frost Advisory outlined here in light blue, and that includes us here in the Metro. Still, though, we will see the opportunity for some of the coolest weather that we've seen in over seven months. Very abnormal for us, but with two frontal boundaries crossing over the forecast on day two. We can expect widespread freezing concerns here across North Georgia, so a freeze warning will be in place on Sunday morning. Here's what you could be stepping outdoors to early on Saturday. Temperatures that drop all the way down to 36 degrees, but once you factor in the wind chill, it'll feel like you're below freezing with a feels-like temperature of 31, so you definitely need the winter attire tomorrow, and you'll need it heading into the work week. I'll show you when conditions will begin to warm up. Once again, coming up next time, I'll see you. All right, Marquise, thanks. Taking a live look now at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Flights are moving, but the delays will linger for days. Coming up, we're getting an update from travelers. Welcome back. There are still lots of delays at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport right now. Our Christopher King has been there all throughout the evening, hearing from frustrated travelers. Christopher, I'm sure the ground stop being lifted came as welcome news to everyone there, but it's little consolation when the lines are long and there are lots of folks all in the same boat. Little consolation, but flights are taking off. Take a look up here. There are still lots of delays, lots of cancellations, but some flights are taking off. And take a look out over here at this line. This is the scene right now. We're at the checkout area of the north side of the domestic terminal. It is easing a bit, but it's still crowded. Just look at how long this line is. These passengers are trying to check in. Some, their flights are canceled. Others, long delays, all trying to rebook. It looked like a regular Friday night when we first got here this afternoon, not anymore though. The airport is crowded with passengers stuck here. Many have been here almost all day. They have no idea when they'll be able to take off. The nationwide ground stoppage now lifted. Flights can resume, but now the ripple effects. A sea of passengers still waiting to find out when They'll be able to fly. Why? Still a logjam from all those delayed flights. The ground stoppage lasted for hours. That means major cancellations and delays. That dashed travel plans for passengers. We spoke with one woman who was flying to New York for her aunt's 85th birthday. She won't make it back for that. We spoke with her family taking their teenage daughter on a cruise for her birthday. Those plans are dashed and we spoke with a woman who came in from New Orleans after celebrating her birthday. She's stuck here for a while and we're talking live to passengers who are online right now waiting to fly out. We're going to talk to this gentleman right here, sir. What is your name? My name is Isaac. What's your last name? Batty. And where are you flying from? Where are you going to? LA originally and we're here for getting a connecting flight to Orlando. So what happened to your flight? It was grounded. So we were literally about to start flying, and then they said, nope, can't do it. Were you on the flight? Yes, we were in the plane. We actually stayed in the plane for about two hours before they were able to get to a gate and let us back into the airport. And how long have you been waiting here all day? Oh, gosh. Well, it's been since four that we were about to fly out. So, I mean, that puts us at about... Six and a half hours, and my wife and kids are over there just resting, because we've been in that line, we've been in this line, we've been in, you know, all across the airport, you know, shuttling back and forth. It's just been a mess. What is the airline telling you now? Well, the airline is telling us that flights have not been canceled, so you can still jump on it. But they took our baggage off so that by the time we get our baggage checked in, the flight's already gone. So now I'm trying to see if I can get another flight switched and changed and refund. I'm on hold with them, you know. So it's just, we understand that everyone's trying to scramble, but, you know, it's really, this is supposed to be a vacation for us, you know. And are those vacation plans dashed? Not quite. It remains to be seen, to be honest. We're hopeful that we can still make something out of this. So you're here, your family's here, but your bags are not? Our bags are here. It would have been nice if they were still on the plane. That way we would have been able to book it over there and then jump back on and get the flight. But now we have to go all the way through security again with those bags that they took off the plane just to put them back on the plane. So... Isaac, how frustrating is all this for you? It's very frustrating. I mean, we didn't think that, I mean, we had a long layover, so we've been here since 8.30 a.m., and so, yeah, it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating for my wife. She's expecting, so, I mean, this has been taxing for her physically, emotionally. The kids are, you know, they've had it. They were excited about flying, and we'll see if they still are later. How far along is your wife? Well, she's due in May, so, yeah, I mean, about just through the first trimester. So you have this frustrating wait. What do you do now? Yeah, well, I mean, we're just hoping and praying, and, I mean, we're trying to get our flight switched to something that'll work for us. You know, we're turning down offers to, you know, try to stay somewhere so we can, you know, work it out with Frontier. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we're trying to make the most that we can here in the airport. So do you stay in the airport, get a hotel, friends, family? What do you do? We're looking into friends and family, but I mean, we got people two hours away just, you know, by happenstance. But, you know, and they're doing a real favor to us by even considering bringing us over there. But I mean, if what Frontier has said is true, And there are flights that are opening up, and flights that we can get on, then we'll do it. Isaac, thank you very much. Let's take another look at this line here at the Frontier area. Flights were grounded for hours. The FAA says communications issues affecting all air traffic control are to blame. Why did this happen? The FAA says that system is old. It got overloaded. The FAA now says no lives were at risk. We just heard from an employee for Frontier. She says the first flight out of here will take off at 1 a.m., which doesn't sound like a long time for now, but when you think of it, a lot of people have been here for two, three, four, six hours. They've been waiting here all day, and they're frustrated. Back to you. You can certainly understand why they are. Isaac trying to make the best of a bad situation and shepherd his family through this. Multiply theirs by 1.5 million, I read, passengers stranded across the country, Christopher, and there's an enormous economic impact of this. That's right. There's an enormous economic impact. There are folks who are trying to book hotels. Those hotel rates, as you can imagine, went up. There are folks who are trying to get ride shares back from the airport. Those prices went up. There are people who are trying to get rental cars. If they can find them, those prices, you know the mantra, those prices have gone up. Back to you. Yeah. One thing to have to... Try hard to find an available car rental or to find an available Airbnb or a hotel room. But what if you don't have any money for those things, Christopher? I know you spoke with Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbaum earlier in the 6 p.m. hour. And he said that they were going to have extra officers there at the airport to assist in whatever ways. But, I mean, with so many people involved and they're at the airport for hours, they've already been there for several hours. They could be there overnight into tomorrow. Have you heard anything from either Chief Shearbaum or maybe some of the police officers who were there at the airport assisting about some kind of an effort to help those people who might not have the money to make it through a situation like this? Well, when I spoke with the chief, he was talking about the public safety aspect of it. You know, it's not clear that the police would be able to help these folks in terms of booking hotel rooms or finding accommodations. But the chief had said earlier that there's a phalanx of police officers out here, more police officers out here at the airport to make sure that they ensure public safety. I was walking through the hallways of the airport. I saw some officers out here and there appear to be a lot of A lot more out here than they're normally here. Well, that's a good idea with the huge crowds. People, by all accounts, seem to be handling it with some equanimity. But as you point out, that could change as the hours progress. Christopher King, live at Hartsfield-Jackson, thanks so much. We'll check back, and still to come on Fox 5 News at 10, we'll continue to look at the fallout from today's chaotic ground stop, the questions that are still unanswered. And a fraternity prank goes terribly wrong at Kennesaw State, how several students ended up facing felonies. Well, the stunning FAA ground stop has been lifted, but the air traffic headaches are far from over for more than a million people tonight. We showed you part of the press briefing room presentation from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullin. We want to bring you an extended portion of that briefing, which stretched on for more than a half hour. Take a listen. I just want to reiterate this. The public was never at danger through this process. There was never any lives at risk, there was no flights at risk, FAA was able to handle it, we did it out of an abundant of caution, but I do understand the internet traffic and where all these conspiracies start running towards, I just can't say this enough. All your loved ones are safe. We are working to resolve the issue, and we hope to have operations up and going normal at some point. So with that, I'll turn it over to Secretary Duffy. Thank you, Mark Wayne, and good night to everybody. First, I want to thank you for your partnership and assistance. Mark Wayne has been great. Stephen Miller put together all of the intelligence assets of the White House. We were in multiple times talking to the President about what was happening in the airspace. Complete engagement by President Trump's team. So just I want to walk through what happened today. So at 3.36 p.m. we experienced instability for our radar and our communications and our centers and our tracons across the country. So if you don't know this, at airports we have towers, the next rung out is a TRACON, after that we have enroute centers. The TRACONs and the centers, we started to have inconsistency in Seeing the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes. And we have procedures for this, our pilots are well trained, our air traffic controllers are well trained and at that point we issued a ground stop. We had over 3,500 airplanes in the air. They all engaged and last time I looked we had less than 400 in the airspace as they were all coming in to safely land and we navigated it with our well known procedures that we have when these incidents happen. I'm going to talk about where we're at now, but before I do that, when we shut down the airspace, oftentimes there are critical movements that have to take place, whether it's medevac, there's cargo operations that are moving, critical medicines that save people's lives. We didn't lose all telecom. We didn't lose all radar, but that instability, because of abundance of caution and making sure we keep the American flyer safe, we did the ground stop. But we were going to allow those life-saving movements to still occur, as well as with law enforcement as well. So 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. And because of that, we shut the system down. Now, I have already replaced some of those switches with President Trump. And our new IP switches did not go down. It's the old hardware that went down. And I think the question for the American people is, do you want your Congress to fund this? President Trump has asked for the money. 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. Let's not do a patchwork 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. Now, if you look to the past administrations, going back 25 years, Fifteen billion dollars has been given to the FAA to fix this air traffic control system. And guess what, barely anything was done. We had a down payment, President Trump asked for it in the one big beautiful bill of twelve and a half billion dollars. We are building in that twelve and a half billion dollars, that portion of the build will be done by the time President Trump leaves office. We are moving at a speed that has never been seen before with regard to the FAA. But that's a partial funding. I think America demands that the Congress give the rest of the resources to finish the bill. I think the Congress at a point looked to the history of the FAA and said, we don't trust you. Well, with President Trump and what we've done, I think they do trust because what we've done with that first tranche of money. And so, with a brand new state-of-the-art system, he won't have these outages. So what you experienced today, but you can think back, many of you covered the story from a year and a half ago, we had outages in Newark, multiple outages in Newark. 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. And by the way, if you look at how much money Congress spends, Peter, you've, you've We've covered Congress. They waste a lot of money. What's more important than having an air traffic control system that actually works? And so the president said, you know what, let's finish this job. New hardware, new software, new telecommunication. Many of our towers are almost 100 years old. Our air traffic controllers have leaky roofs, air conditioning that doesn't work. They're high in the air. Their elevators don't work. Their roofs leak. I want new towers. We should also invest in many of the airports around the country. Frankly, many of them are embarrassing. Let's get the money. Let's invest so we never have to come at 8.30 at night and have a press conference on why air travel was shut down, why we have... Tens of thousands of people in airports separated from their families without any knowledge of where they're going to sleep tonight. Now, you probably picked up that we've identified the problem. We've got our centers and our TRACONs operational right now. And so at 8.15 tonight, Eastern Time, we've opened up the airspace. Now, does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It's going to be slow, right? So if you're watching, you're at an airport, check with your airline. It depends on do we have crews available. We have pilots and flight attendants available to fly your flight. We're going to try to move as many of those as we can tonight if we have the capacity with crews to move those flights. If not, we're going to start tomorrow morning with our airline partners moving those aircraft. But it's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy along with Mark Wayne Mullen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. College football teams are also caught up in this mess. Here's a look at the travel nightmare for a number of those teams. This courtesy of On3, a sports website. Multiple SEC teams are stuck. Tennessee, Ole Miss, Texas were grounded. Tennessee trying to fly out to College Station, Texas tonight, but unclear when that might happen, although. Secretary Duffy said during that news conference they will make it a priority to get larger planes, including those carrying those teams to their destinations for their games tomorrow. Auburn switched to a bus for its trip to Starkville during the stoppage.