a DDOs type attack to me:

“The system was “Overwhelmed with data”….” according the FAA spokesperson.

Yes, the FAA is using “outdated technology”, but still….blaming the equipment doesn’t explain the data issue…..that answer is too pat.

Or it could have been a staged outage to help them get the funding to upgrade.

Thing is, the FAA chose not to use the funding they had to update their tech equipment over the years, but instead used it to increase their bureaucracy over the past 20 years or so. I guess small  incremental fixes don’t generate enough kickbacks….

ETA: Both the FAA and Microsoft are stridently proclaiming that “this was an Infrastructure issue” and “not a cyber attack“. Oddly, they are saying the exact same words about the (supposedly) unrelated “outages”…Coincidence?