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The United States on Friday lifted an hours-long ground stop at the nation\u2019s airports, with top officials explaining that the disruption was due to old equipment and not a cyberattack or sweeping Microsoft outage.<\/strong><\/p>\n Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a late-night briefing at the White House that US airspace was now \u201copened up,\u201d while warning it would take time for the travel chaos to clear.<\/p>\n \u201cAt 8:15 tonight Eastern Time, we\u2019ve opened up the airspace,\u201d Duffy said. \u201cNow does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It\u2019s going to be slow.\u201d<\/p>\n The breakdown came a day after Duffy and the White House had formally asked Congress for $30 billion to upgrade and modernize the US Air Traffic Control System.<\/p>\n \u201cOur switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data, and they went down,\u201d Duffy said. \u201cIt\u2019s the old hardware that went down, and I think the question for the American people is: Do you want your Congress to fund this?\u201d<\/p>\n Duffy however insisted it was still safe for Americans to fly.<\/p>\n Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed speculation about a coordinated cyber assault on the United States, or any link to the Microsoft outage that affected services worldwide.<\/p>\n \u201cWelcome to Friday the 13th, right? You know, I want to make sure everybody understands that there is no connection between this and Microsoft. I know a lot of people are making that jump,\u201d Mullin said.<\/p>\n Mullin added there was \u201cactually no cyber attack.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we start looking at cyber threats, cyber attacks, typically some people are going to raise their hand up and say, \u2018Hey, we did that.\u2019 There\u2019s no chatter.\u2019 We haven\u2019t seen any footprints,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n But he said US security and law enforcement agencies were still checking and had ruled nothing out.<\/p>\n The two officials also defended President Donald Trump, who had yet to comment on the air stoppage some five hours after it began.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump immediately had people in his office,\u201d Mullin said. \u201cWe were communicating.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n