0 effort to take this balloon down, that would pose a risk to these airplanes down below. so we re seeing this sort of take place to make it so that the area below is clear and safe for this to possibly happen. we will see exactly when that takes place. we know from the ground stop that was published by the faa, that is in place until 2:45 eastern standard time, so another 45 minutes. and this is also impacting, you know, flights that are going into other places. so this might mean that commercial flights on the ground are being told to stay on the ground so the trickle effect, the trickle-down effect goes beyond this area. it s a huge area, but it goes well beyond that and it s including places that have commercial planes flying into the three airports impacted. let s zero in on that. a huge area, 20,000 square miles, and that includes the coastline, and of course, what, generally about 14 miles of waterways along the coastline, which is, you know, u.s. territory before hitting inte
fighter jets wednesday and closed the billings, montana airport ordering a ground stoppage in case they shot the balloon down. the president was briefed about his options. president biden was advised by military chiefs about the possibility for civilian casualties if they were to shoot the balloon down over the continental u.s. adding the surveillance balloon does not provide the chinese government with more intelligence than it can glean from existing low orbit satellites. u.s. officials have mitigated the ability for this balloon to survey sites blocking it from doing so and they re learning a lot by monitoring the balloon. dana: a lot of people are wondering why the administration wouldn t have shot it out of the sky immediately especially if it was over an uninhabited mountain areas in montana. from the discussions i ve had.
once the balloon was detected, the u.s. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information. gillian: the u.s. military scrambled f-22 fighter jets yesterday and closed the billings montana airport ordering a ground stoppage yesterday while the president was briefed by the national security team in the event that president biden opted to order the military to shoot down the chinese spy balloon. among those who briefed the president were generals glen van hurricane, the head of northern cam manned norad. he and the other chiefs recommended not shooting counsel the balloon because of the danger posed on the ground from falling debris and the assessment that the surveillance balloon does not provide the chinese government from more intelligence than it can glean from existing low orbit satellites. president biden was asked about the balloon at the white house today but ignored the question. a senior defense official gillian said this is not the first
significant tornados. one of them, the one that went through selma, possibly was on the ground, anderson, for about 15 miles. so, these were definitely significant storms that rolled through the south. appreciate it. thank you. we re learning more about what caused the faa ground stoppage yesterday. pete, what can you tell us? anderson, we re learning more about this all the time. the federal aviation administration has been in the cross hairs of critics since yesterday. 10,000 flights delayed, another 1,300 cancelled. and we were the first to report that the computer system that crashed, which stores critical safety information for pilots was 30 years old. now the faa says it knows the cause of the failure, not the age of the system but rather who was working on it. in a just released statement, the faa says it determined that a data file was damaged by personnel who failed to follow procedures. government sources tell us the