More than 3,500 flights were grounded on Friday as the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop due to communication issues at Air Route Control Centers, according to Deadline.
As operations slowly resumed, comedian Bill Maher used his Friday evening monologue on HBO’s Real Time to joke that the massive aviation standstill “could be Selma Blair,” linking the system-wide glitch to the actress’s recent airport arrest, reported TheWrap.
“Did you see they grounded all the planes in America? All the planes,” Maher told his studio audience. “They say it’s nothing nefarious, I don’t believe them. It could be a hack from China, it could be a hack from Iran, it could be a hack from AI itself. It could be Selma Blair, we just don’t know.”
Maher’s jab drew loud laughter and applause from the crowd, referencing Selma Blair’s October arrest at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, noted The Indian Express. According to CNN reports cited by Yahoo News UK, the 54-year-old actress allegedly attempted to open an emergency exit door mid-flight on a Delta Air Lines service, punching one crew member and biting another before being restrained.
Duffy explained during a press briefing that old switches, routers, and 1980s copper lines overloaded with data caused radar instability and communication failures across the network.
The FAA order marked only the second nationwide shutdown since the September 11, 2001 attacks. By the time the ground stop was lifted at 5:15 p.m. PT, more than 10,000 flights had experienced disruptions, including at least 600 diversions that left passengers stranded across American airports, The Indian Express reported.
Maher remained skeptical of official assurances that the outage was completely free of malicious intent. “I just wanna throw this out there; maybe it’s nothing, but we did lose our email yesterday. Everybody’s email went down,” Maher noted on the show, adding concerns about supermarket freezer hacks in Europe.
NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang says he should have known. It's not confirmed, but one big red flag was that she had an actual big red flag. pic.twitter.com/V6YapZwpap
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that an overload of data on older 1980s copper lines, switches, and routers led to radar instability across Air Route Control Centers.
The ground stop disrupted more than 10,000 flights, forced at least 600 diversions, and left thousands of passengers stranded nationwide.
Maher joked about actress Selma Blair following her October arrest for an alleged mid-flight altercation aboard a Delta Air Lines flight at JFK Airport.
A representative for Selma Blair did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment about Maher’s monologue.