Biden addresses computer outage that forced FAA to stop all U.S. departures

Departing the White House on Wednesday morning, President Biden said he had been in communication with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the computer outage that forced the Federal Aviation Administration to halt all domestic air departures. Biden said the cause of the computer failure was still unknown. Just before 9 a.m. ET, the FAA said, “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually” and that the ground stop had been lifted.

Video transcript

- What do we know about this FAA stuff?

JOE BIDEN: I'll tell you, I just spoke with Rudy. They don't know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes. I told him to report directly to me when they find out.

Aircraft can still land safely just not take off right now. They don't know what the cause of it is. they expect to be able in a couple hours they'll have a good sense of the cause. And we'll respond at that time.