Mike Pompeo says ‘FAA owes the American people an answer’ after system outage

A statement to the Washington Examiner read, “Americans deserve to know if this was due to negligence, if it was an accident, or if it was a cyberattack. And their government, starting with the Department of Transportation, needs to show it is leading and not just responding. That means displaying accountability to the American people and not obscuring the truth.”

“Americans have faced far too many air travel challenges over the past few weeks, the busiest and most important travel weeks during the year,” it continued.

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(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah, File)

(AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Pompeo referenced his national security experience in an interview Wednesday and said, “When there were attacks from abroad, there was an already tell-tale sign, almost always some footprint.”

There was usually “something to suggest that this wasn’t just somebody flipped a switch that shouldn’t have been flipped or a piece of code that was written improperly,” he added.

And it was discovered almost always “in very short order.”

“Now we are 12, 14, 16 hours on — it [should be] pretty apparent [if] there was an external system that drove the failure or something from inside, and they should, I would think, have the answer to that,” he said.

Early Wednesday morning, the FAA grounded all flights, citing a system outage. Air traffic operations were later resumed after systems were rebooted. The White House insists that there is “no evidence” of a cyberattack in the situation.

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A former FAA official called the nationwide disruption “unheard of,” noting that it’s the first such incident since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The FAA has said it is looking into the cause.