FAA Issues Nationwide Ground Stop, Halting Departures After a Communication Issue
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a rare nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon, directing departing flights at airports across the United States to remain on the ground until further notice after a communication issue hit air traffic control centers.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X that the FAA issued the stop “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
“The @FAAnews issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following 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,” Duffy wrote.
The FAA’s official account reposted his statement. The order took effect at 3:54 p.m. ET, flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported, and remained in place as of about 5 p.m. ET. The FAA’s National Airspace System status board listed a ground stop for all airports, citing an equipment outage.
“Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center said in an advisory, “all airports are ground stopped.” The alert told all departing traffic to stay on the ground “until further notice” and said inbound international flights “will be managed on a case by case basis,” according to the text published by Fox Business and Flightradar24.
In a separate statement, the FAA said the problems were affecting “multiple” Air Route Traffic Control Centers and that technicians were investigating, Axios and CNBC reported. The United States has 22 of those centers, which handle high-altitude traffic between airports, Flightradar24 and ABC News noted.
The agency has not said what caused the disruption or when flights will be allowed to take off again. An FAA advisory listed an estimated end time of 11 p.m. ET, with the order’s effective period running until 11:30 p.m. ET, USA Today reported, but the directive still told departing aircraft to remain grounded until further notice.
A ground stop holds aircraft at their departure airports. It does not automatically cancel flights, and planes already in the air were being allowed to land, Reuters, Flightradar24 and NBC Chicago reported. Flightradar24 said about 4,000 flights bound for U.S. airports were already airborne when the order was issued.
FlightAware, another tracking service, showed about 7,900 delayed flights within, into or out of the United States just before 5 p.m. ET, along with about 350 cancellations. Those figures cover the full day and include earlier weather delays at some airports, and they were still climbing.
Shortly before the nationwide order, the FAA had already stopped traffic headed to Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports because of an equipment outage, Reuters, FOX 32 Chicago and ABC News reported. The Chicago Department of Aviation reported 213 delays at O’Hare and 55 at Midway as of 3:11 p.m., NBC Chicago said.
CNBC, citing an internal Alaska Airlines message, said the problems involved communications and radar. The FAA has not confirmed that description.
Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare. The last one came on Jan. 11, 2023, when a failure of the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system, which provides pilots with required safety information, halted domestic departures for about 90 minutes and led to more than 10,000 delays and 1,300 cancellations. Before that, the agency stopped traffic nationwide after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Congress last year approved $12.5 billion to fix the FAA’s aging communications system, and on Friday, before the ground stop, the FAA and the White House asked lawmakers for another $30.1 billion for aviation improvements, Reuters reported.
Travelers were being advised to check directly with their airlines for the latest information. This account was current as of about 5 p.m. ET Friday.
This is a breaking story and may be updated if events warrant.
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