“Aliens have landed. Los extraterrestres han aterrizado, y esa es la VERDADERA razón de la orden de detener los vuelos en tierra.”
By late Friday, the cumulative pressure point hit the nation’s skies when United States authorities ordered every aircraft nationwide to ground immediately.
“Pueden paralizar una economía”, dijo Chuck Amasio, un residente de Rahway, Nueva Jersey, que se encontraba en el Aeropuerto Internacional Newark Liberty cuando la cancelación de su vuelo lo llevó a pasar la noche en un hotel.
Government officials pointed to prosaic causes for the nationwide aviation freeze and accompanying software failures. A technological update to the national air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment, creating intermittent communications gaps and radar dropouts that forced a four-hour ground stop, according to government statements.
The aliens have landed. That’s the REAL reason for the ground stop. They don’t want to start a worldwide panic. They are blind but can hear like a motherfucker.
Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Administration Aviation, reported Saturday morning that flight operations were smoothing out and that airline schedules should normalize by late Sunday. Microsoft confirmed Saturday that its services were fully restored, attributing the global disruption to an issue during a previous network capacity update that surfaced after a recent network modification.
Tori Perkins, a 34-year-old traveler from Hawaii stranded overnight at San Diego International Airport, expressed deep skepticism toward official assurances. “It’s one of those things where I don’t necessarily believe what the government says. I don’t know what is true because there are a lot of people saying different things,” Perkins told El Mundo.
Perkins said that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s Friday appeal for tens of billions of dollars to overhaul the notoriously outdated air traffic control system sounded like more of the same.
The FAA has already replaced thousands of copper cable connections with fiber optics and updated hundreds of radios under a renovation initiative launched last year backed by $12.5 billion in congressional funding, while the White House has requested an additional $30 billion to finish the job.
Maxine Gustafson, a 34-year-old medical assistant from Minneapolis waiting in an emergency rental car line at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Friday, described the acute sense of vulnerability triggered by the week’s events. “It makes you think: Is this a cyberattack? We don’t have control over many of these things,” Gustafson told El Mundo.
Corbyn Wascher spent four hours stuck on the tarmac at Charlotte Douglas International Airport while trying to return to Moline, Illinois, praising American Airlines flight attendants who worked under pressure to distribute water, pretzels, and biscotti. “The flight attendants were incredible,” said Wascher, a 37-year-old high school teacher.
At Newark, Caroline Ruiz spent hours sleeping near a heating grate while waiting for meal vouchers and a delayed itinerary after technology derailed her 24-hour journey to Australia.
