US air travel returns to normal after technology breakdown

U.S. air travel returned mostly to normal Thursday, a day after a computer system that sends safety information to pilots broke down and grounded traffic from coast to coast.

By late morning on the East Coast, only about 100 flights had been canceled and 1,000 delayed — much lower figures than on Wednesday, when more than 1,300 flights were scrubbed and 11,000 delayed.

The Federal Aviation Administration said a damaged database file appeared to have caused the outage in the safety-alert system. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised a thorough examination to avoid another major failure.

“Now we have to understand how this could have happened in the first place, why the usual redundancies that would stop it from being that disruptive did not stop it from being disruptive this time, and what the original source of the errors or the corrupted files would have been,” Buttigieg told CNN.

He said there was no indication that the outage was caused by a cyberattack, “but we’re also not going to rule that out until we have a clearer and better understanding of what’s taking place.”

The massive disruption was the latest black eye for the FAA, which has traded blame with airlines over who is inconveniencing passengers more. Critics, including airline and tourism leaders, say the agency has been underfunded and needs to modernize its technology.

The FAA outage, which began Tuesday night, “is a clear sign that America’s transportation network desperately needs significant upgrades,” said Geoff Freeman, president of the U.S. Travel Association trade group.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has been critical of the FAA on a variety of issues, including staffing of air traffic controllers. Last fall he said the agency makes “a heroic effort” and does well most of the time...