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The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights on Friday due to a telecommunications outage, citing safety reasons. Inbound international flights will be managed case by case.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights on Friday “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” The alert was issued at 3:54 p.m. ET and stated that “all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.”
The FAA said inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “no indication as of yet” that anything “nefarious” was behind the ground stop, and that it was a telecommunications outage “as of now.” Mullin said President Donald Trump has been briefed and they are “are not ruling out anything at this point” in terms of what caused the communications issue.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an online post that “FAA technicians are investigating the issue” and that they will provide immediate updates as they have them.
Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia is at capacity and Chicago O’Hare International Airport is nearing capacity, meaning there is no place for planes to park, a source with knowledge told NBC News. It is possible some of these planes will have to divert to other airports.
At Newark Liberty International Airport, personnel in the control tower said the situation is “a whole mess right now,” according to LiveATC. “We’re running out of space” and “there’s significant gate issues” were comments also heard on the live audio feed.
United Airlines issued a statement acknowledging the ground stop.
Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FAA ordered an unprecedented nationwide ground stop. All civilian air traffic across U.S. airspace was halted and airborne planes were ordered to land at the nearest available airports. In January 2023, the FAA grounded all flights, blaming a failure in the Notice to Air Missions system.
The ground stop halted much of the air traffic across the U.S. suddenly, creating a massive logistics problem as planes on the ground could not depart and airports filled with aircraft waiting to land.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop caused by communications problems, allowing airplane departures to resume after roughly four hours.
Microsoft apologized for a widespread outage that disrupted Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services, saying it addressed the underlying issue and detected no malicious activity.
