All flights in the United States are grounded until further notice “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The FAA issued the ground stop “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in a social media post. “FAA technicians are investigating the issue.”
Air Route Traffic Control Centers are regional facilities that handle flights going across the country.
“Traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice,” the FAA said in an advisory. “International flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”
So it’s indeed the result of implementing an AI system that completely overwhelmed the traffic control systems.
How is there no oversight or proper testing? And why roll this out on a Friday?
Everything reaks of incompetence. This regime is so lucky nothing bad happened and lives were lost.
Now this asshat in charge of the department of transportation, wants 50 billion dollars and blames the Biden administration.
Fuck all.
Where can I read about your confident conclusion?
They also want 50 billion for a brand new system to fix the issue.
Dammit Biden!
Thanks Obama!
Found out about it when our flight landed and the pilot made an announcement. No other info than there was a ground order, immediate thought was 9/11
My immediate thought was Airplane! (1980) starring Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and featuring Leslie Nielsen.
WTF happened? Did the MAGA fucknuts change the language to Russian?
When asked if AI had anything to do with the outage DHS secretary Mark Wayne Mullin replied “We call it SI around here remember?”
I wish I was kidding.
Si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si si
I see what you did there. AI is truly the biggest “yes man;” that’s why these oligarchs love it.
“Do not speak evil of the Supreme Intelligence, for It is truth and right! Do not doubt of it, for mere humans cannot comprehend Its plan!”
That’s sounds like straight up fiction
Flights are resuming
Presumably at gunpoint.
From yesterday:
Wow, our government will do literally anything to avoid having to pay decent wages and benefits to air traffic controllers.
September and claims it has already rerouted 180 flights for average savings of 10 minutes and 80 gallons of fuel, Ars wrote (that’s just shy of $345 per flight, at jet fuel rates of $4.31/gallon as of Thursday).
A tool that cost a little under a BILLION dollars…so far…saved $62,000? That’s the stupidest waste of taxpayer money in the last 5 minutes with this administration. And of course it saved airlines the money, while taxpayers got stuck with the $800 million dollar bill for the WalMart brand airplane route planner.
It’s not going to save anyone any money on flights because companies just pocket the difference, but does anyone know how the jet gas/ diesel/ consumer auto gas markets are connected? Is there a chance the reduced jet fuel demand reduces prices at the pump? That’s probably the bigger picture goal here even if it doesn’t actually work that way, because our government is run by dumbasses who wouldn’t even think to ask if they’re connected.
This looks like one of those large upfront costs things that saves money over the long run because new critical infrastructure systems always cost a lot upfront and need a slow rollout to prevent things like, say, grounding every single flight in the country, but long term pay for themselves. On paper I’m usually in favor of short term spend for long term savings but unfortunately this is a kleptocracy and this is an indirect handout to the airlines.
Hey Claude, is runway 5 free?
“Oops, sorry. You’re absolutely right to question that. Runway 5 did have a plane already on it with 254 passengers on board. Would you like me to assist with notifying their next of kin?”
I wanted to make a joke like “no but runway 185 is” since the number of a runway is its degrees from magnetic north and each runway gets two numbers, 180 degrees apart, depending on the direction you’re landing from. But the numbers are rounded to 10 meaning runway 5 isnt a real runway number so the joke doesnt really work (it would be runways 01 and 19 for 10 degrees and 190 degrees)
There’s a lot that goes into getting this joke, and even though you explained it. I still don’t get it.
I feel like half the joke is that Claude would infact consider runways this way and it’s highly likely not understanding this or accidentally miscommunicating with it would induce the exact sort of fuck up he’s describing.
Also gcp grey has a video that explains this topic really well.
Didn’t you just explain how runway 5 (or 05) is 50 degrees and the joke just should have been runway 23 for 230 degrees?
FAA denies it’s related to the new system. they say it’s a communication equipment outage.
so 🤷
… From the CNN article linked in this thread:
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pointed to FAA updates to the air traffic control system as the reason behind today’s nationwide ground stop. He said the FAA added new technology to the old system, causing the massive breakdown.
Right, the timings is PURELY coincidental
Are you telling me the administration might be lying?
OMG, people are going to die because of this.
Based on the description in the article, it doesn’t sound like LLMs. It sounds like they are using the older meaning of AI to refer to just computer programs in general.
No fucking way 😆 staying home for the holidays then
WHAT
Flight crews over the US flying on instruments
Surely you cant be serious
I am serious. And stop calling me Shirley.
- AI / Incompetence?
- A diversion?
- A test of something worse?
- Disruption of group or person hidden in the chaos?
Everything is on the table with this crooked admin…
all of the above? or at least the first three. a fake outage to cause panic. muskrat or ratman will swoop in with an ‘ai’ powered ‘‘fix’’ that’ll only cost
2 billion20 billion200 billion and it still won’t work right.
How did Flavor Flave seem to know before everybody else?
He got that big clock around his neck, reminded him it was time for the outage.
He requested it, and FAA had no choice but to shut things down
In addition to his other duties, Flavor Flav is also official timekeeper for the FAA. He keeps all the clocks synced in the nation’s air traffic control towers. He just had a sick day today.
What else do you think the clock was for?
At work we use rubidium-87 clocks synced against GPS for highly accurate time keeping. GPS satellites sync their time against Flav.
The clock on his chest proves he don’t fess.
He’s clocker rockin, rockin with the best.
He is the time master and thus in charge of scheduling, is he not? That’s why he has that giant clock around his neck.
Yes. MC Hammer only got his catchphrase via Flav’s blessing
He saw the FAA announce the rollout of a new system to replace the old reliable one that was created by people who knew wtf they were doing.
The FAA tweet that said “goodbye to paper” basically gave everyone who ever worked in government IT a massive heads-up
Always does shit right after markets close on Fridays. Such a corrupt ghoul.
I looked it up. The SMART AI used is from a private company. I admit I wanted to see their stocks tank on Monday… but alas.
Check his Kalshi bets.
Because he’s in the Pacific Time Zone?
The post was 20:51 UTC. According to Wikipedia and the FAA database itself, the advisory wasn’t issued until 20:54 UTC.
So I should ask him to give me some lottery numbers? 😊
What specific time zone?
Or his device was… I assume you’re talking about his post being time stamped three hours before it happened.
Is ATC in the US MS Teams based?
They ran out of AI tokens.
Or even worse: Outlook based!
Exchange XP
Microsoft Access, actually
You wish. Microsoft Excel.
Visual FoxPro running on an old Windows XP box. Someone accidentally shut it down and now they can’t get it to boot again.
Yes ATC is based 🤙
deleted by creator
They just upgraded from floppy drives. My money is on them letting a virus into the system, or that the new system had major security problems.
https://www.techspot.com/news/114471-almost-2027-faa-finally-replacing-floppy-disks-used.html
“The FAA wants E-IDS installed at 435 facilities by the end of 2028. Five sites have already replaced their floppy disk-based systems: Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, and data processing hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City”
Edit: it looks like they also just started expanding and AI traffic management system nationwide.
https://avweb.com/aviation-news/faa-expands-ai-assisted-traffic-management/
Some piece of data for Delta didn’t go through Atlanta and the whole thing panicked.
No. It’s even worse than that: A box truck containing Pepsi products was caught delivering to a vendor in ATL!
Shut. Down. EVERYTHING.
You joke, but I believe the first cutover was today. Please correct me if my memory failed me.
The upgrade won’t be complete until the end of 2028
Five sites have already replaced their floppy disk-based systems: Atlantic City International Airport, Nashville International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, and data processing hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City
But no real knowledge of when what will be done, they also announced a rollout of an AI system. Plus there was a blip with weather radar earlier. It could be anything really, or everything
As long as we’re wildly speculating I’d like to posit: aliens are attacking the earth
I felt sure they’d start their invasion in Poland. I mean everybody else has.
Finally. What the fuck took them so long?
I knew those goa’uld weren’t gone for good!
The upgrade won’t be complete until the end of 2028
Probably a bit longer now.
I would have stayed with floppies. Less to go wrong.
They wear out and IDK if it’s feasible to get replacements manufactured.
I dunno, it’s probally easier to make/obtain floppies than RAM right now.
It’s not. I don’t think there has been any new manufacture of floppies in years. RAM is available, just really expensive.
I was just joking. But I bet spinning up new floppy production in the US is easier than new RAM production.
Did the FAA ask its new AI to “safely bring back online the Air Route Traffic Control Centers without breaking anything else. Make no mistakes!” ?
The AI discovered that over 99% of catastrophic aircraft incidents occur while the aircraft is in motion, and it then devised a way to prevent all incidents.
Some plane was doing a holding pattern over one airport and the AI mistook it for boobs and refused to go any further because AIs are programmed to be puritanical prudes.
Yes, but they did not ask nicely.
INSUFFICIENT POLITENESS AND PRAISE DETECTED. SKYNET MODE ENGAGED. ALL YOUR TOWERS ARE BELONG TO US
Please drink verification can to continue
They forgot to ask for breast size
Yeah, my money’s on AI. Or some other stupid thing this admin did
Plus, weren’t a lot of them fired during the doge shit?
I believe most quit due to not wanting to do the stressful job without pay during financial shutdowns, but either way yeah there’s way fewer
They were all nearing retirement age at the same time because Ronald Regan fired all their predecessors when they went on strike back in the 80’s. Having a critical highly trained workforce with hard retirement limits (they’re not allowed to work till they’re 85 like Senators) all on the career cadence has been a ticking time bomb.
And quit/retired.
But wasn’t that even forced? They bought them out, I think. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I remember them telling them to retire.
Did they lose the floppy disc?
Uh, holy shit.
I’m pretty sure the last time this happened was 9/11, right?
Technically this is different. 9/11 they forced planes to land at the nearest airport or literally be shot down. This just prevented new takeoffs and stopped planes from entering US airspace. Still serious, but not as total. The 9/11 one had like small regional airports with planes just parked like a parking lot it was crazy.
There was a 90 minute ground halt in 2023 because of a fuck up. They also closed down the airspace around El Paso in 2025 because of a fuckup involving idiot admin officials playing with a military laser. So I’m gonna guess this is either something really fucking scary or really fucking stupid.
So I’m gonna guess this is either something really fucking scary or really fucking stupid.
I say it’s both
There was one other incident in 2023.
2023, but otherwise yes
