The United States (US) reopened airspace after several hours of suspension of most take-offs caused by a communication problem at regional air traffic control centres.
© Lusa
14/11/2026
by
Lusa
Othe United States (US) reopened airspace after several hours of suspension of most take-offs caused by a communication problem at regional air traffic control centres.
“ At 8:15 [Friday], Eastern time [01:15 today in Lisbon], we reopened airspace,” said Transport Secretary Sean Duffy during a press conference at the White House.
However, Duffy warned that the resumption of air traffic would be slow.
As to why thousands of flights were cancelled, the secretary attributed the problem to “old equipment” in the 1980s.
The computer system “was overloaded with data and failed,” Duffy explained.
“ Our new equipment didn't fail. It was the old equipment that presented failures”, detailed, before addressing the Americans: “Do you want Congress to finance this? The President [Donald] Trump asked for the resources”.
The failure takes place one day after the White House asked the US parliament for an additional amount of USD 30.1 billion (27.3 billion) to modernise the air control system in the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin added that there was no cyber attack or “any connection” to the major failure that affected the technological giant Microsoft on Thursday.
The number of flights cancelled in the United States exceeded 2,400, according to data from the FlightRadar24 platform, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended all take-offs in the country.
Some international flights to Europe and Asia managed to depart from US airports despite the suspension.
Several local press outlets and air-tracking platforms recorded on Friday the departure of flights that were not expected to fly over US continental territory.
Among them, some traveled from the east coast of the country to Europe, while others moved to the Hawaiian archipelago and Asia, departing from airports on the west coast of the United States.
In New York, JetBlue canceled all other flights from John F. Kennedy Airport except those heading for Europe, according to a message broadcast through Terminal 5's sound system and quoted by the New York Times.
The suspension has so far not affected any flight to or from Portugal.
But, according to the Lisbon airport portal on the Internet, a TAP flight Air Portugal from Newark, Northeastern USA, which had arrived at 05:25, is expected to land almost two hours late at 7:05.
This is the first suspension of flights at national level in the United States since January 2023, when a critical IT system of the FAA failed. Before that, the latest occurrence of the gender had been following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.