Buttigieg: ‘Not Prepared to Rule Out’ Nefarious Domestic or Foreign Attack on FAA Safety Alert System

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that he can not rule out that the FAA safety alert system computer outage causing thousands of fight delays Wednesday morning was a result of a domestic or foreign attack.

Mitchell said, “We have seen domestic attacks on other aspects of our critical infrastructure, power substations. Are we absolutely positive this was not the result of any nefarious activity, either domestic or foreign?”

Buttigieg said, “We’re not prepared to rule that out. There hasn’t been any indication of that. The FBI has spoken to this, and of course, FAA is looking at that as well as they work to see exactly what was going on inside the files that were in the system leading to this irregularly. Again, what I would say is there’s no direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity. But we’re not yet prepared to rule that out.

Mitchell asked, “How old is the software? Was it being updated? How long will it take to get it back up and running?”

Buttigieg said, “It’s been used for many years. It’s based on a standard. Every country has a version of this global standard to get this safety message traffic through their aviation system. It is periodically and continuously upgraded and updated.”

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