The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted a nationwide ground stop that halted departures from all American airports for about four hours on Friday, 13 November, after a communications failure affected air traffic control centres. More than 10,000 flights were delayed and thousands were cancelled, and disruption was expected to continue into the weekend.
What happened
The FAA ordered the halt on Friday afternoon US time, citing "extraordinary circumstances" and safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X that a communication issue was affecting the Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the 22 facilities that handle aircraft flying at higher altitudes across the country, and that technicians were investigating.
Controllers in several regions lost radio frequencies and radar data. Aircraft already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, while departing flights were held on the ground. Incoming international flights were assessed case by case.
‘Telecommunications outage’, not an attack
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin described the incident as a telecommunications outage and said there was no indication of a cyberattack or terror threat. Asked whether a new AI-assisted air traffic management system recently rolled out by the FAA could be involved, Mullin said officials were looking at it. The system’s developer, Air Space Intelligence, said the ground stop was not caused by its products.
Nationwide ground stops are rare. The last one came in January 2023, when the FAA’s system for sending notices to pilots failed; before that, all US flights were grounded after the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Knock-on effects for travellers
The halt hit the busy Friday afternoon rush, and cancellations were expected to continue into the weekend.
The outage follows another large technology failure this week, when a Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook and Teams in 74 countries.
Sources
- U.S. ends halt on flight departures after nationwide air traffic communications outage (The Air Current)
- FAA ground stop live updates: Duffy blames ‘overloaded’ routers; thousands of flights canceled (ABC News)
- FAA lifts nationwide ground stop of planes at US airports, major delays to continue (Fox News)
- FAA says nationwide ground stop is over after thousands of flights canceled (Yahoo News)
- ABD’de tüm uçuşlar durduruldu (TRT Haber)
- ABD’de ülke çapındaki uçuş yasağı FAA tarafından kaldırıldı (Haber.com)
Photo: Harrison Keely / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
