FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after communications outage

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports on Friday evening, hours after halting all departures because of a communications outage.

What happened

The FAA issued the ground stop at about 3:54 p.m. ET on Friday, stating that "all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice." The agency cited "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety" and said the halt was out of an "abundance of caution."

The FAA canceled the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X that the stop was due to a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. "FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them," he wrote.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the outage was an attack. "This is a telecommunications outage," Mullin said. "All the flights are accounted for." He added, "There was no indication as of yet this was a nefarious attack."

Flight disruptions

Over 3,500 flights were canceled and over 10,000 flights within, into, or out of the United States were delayed, according to the FlightAware aviation tracker. With some 11,000 flights scheduled to depart from U.S. airports after 4 p.m. local time, more cancellations were expected, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

CBS News Texas reported that at Love Field, 186 flights were delayed and 33 were canceled. At DFW Airport, 723 flights were delayed, down from over 800, and 345 flights were canceled.

Fox Weather reported that more than 9,000 flights were delayed and more than 5,200 were canceled as of 8:00 p.m. ET, and that 387 commercial flights were en route at that time.

Investigation and response

The cause of the outage remains under investigation. FAA technicians began investigating the disruption Friday afternoon. The agency has not provided additional details about the nature of the outage or what caused it.

Air Space Intelligence, the AI tech startup that is a vendor for the FAA on its new SMART system for air traffic control, said its software was not responsible. "The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC," the company said in a statement posted to X.

The FAA said inbound international flights would be handled on a case by case basis. Eurocontrol said all flights departing for U.S. airports from its 42 member states were suspended following a request from the FAA to deal with technical issues.

NAV Canada said it was implementing traffic management measures at Toronto Pearson, Montreal-Trudeau, Calgary and Vancouver to safely manage traffic volumes. "Travelers should expect delays and check with their airline. Our systems are operating normally," NAV Canada added.

Why it matters

Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare. The last one before Friday was in January 2023, when the FAA dealt with a system outage. Prior to that, the last ground stop was after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The ground stop order came a day after Duffy asked Congress for $30 billion to upgrade and modernize the U.S. Air Traffic Control System.

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Sources

• dw.com: FAA lifts ground stop for US airport departures
• cnbc.com: FAA lifts ground stop after four hours, but flight cancellations will stretch into the weekend
• newson6.com: FAA lifts nationwide ground stop following air traffic control communication outage - NewsOn6.com
• nbcnews.com: FAA orders nationwide ground stop for all departing flights for ‘reasons of safety’
• foxweather.com: The FAA has ordered a ground stop at all airports in the U.S. | Fox Weather
• cbsnews.com: FAA ground stop lifted; flights at DFW and Dallas Love Field airports delayed - CBS Texas

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.