FAA ends hours-long nationwide ground stop

The FAA lifted its nationwide ground stop Friday night after hours of chaos and thousands of delays and cancellations.Why it matters: The effects of the rare and extreme move will likely ripple through the weekend, with travelers stranded and airlines' planes and crews out of position.Driving the news: In a Friday evening press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was issued after outdated air traffic control communications equipment suffered from "overloaded data, and they went down."Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin added that officials are looking into incompatibilities between that older equipment and newer technology currently being installed.Mullin added that there's no evidence that the problems were tied to a cyberattack.Yes, but: Duffy and Mullin didn't specify the exact initial cause of the problems."We're still working on the details of what went wrong today," Duffy said.Duffy spent much of the press conference pushing Congress for more funding for air traffic control upgrades.

"I can't build things if I don't have money," he told reporters at the White House briefing room.

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