The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon due to communications problems at regional air traffic control centers, an FAA notice said.
The ground stop was being imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” according to the notice.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a communications issue was affecting the regional air traffic control centers that direct planes between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating.
This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication yet that “this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunications outage.”
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The airline said its flights within the state of Alaska and its “neighbor island” flights in Hawaii are not impacted by the nationwide grounding of flights.
The airline, in a statement, said that flights from the West Coast to Hawaii also have been able to continue and that international flights from Honolulu have been cleared for departure.
But the airline said it also was feeling the impacts elsewhere, noting that due to the significance of the ground stop it had canceled some flights in the U.S. and diverted others.
“When the ground stop is lifted, it will take time for our operations to get back on track for the rest of the day,” the statement read. It encouraged travelers to check their flight statuses before going to the airport.
The NWS said both its radar and website are fully operational. The agency sought to correct false reports that it, too, was experiencing communication disruptions.
Europe’s aviation agency has suspended U.S.-bound departures at the request of the FAA from 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday until midnight.
The agency manages air traffic for its 42 member countries across the continent.
Microsoft said it has no indication that the FAA nationwide ground stop is related to the service disruption that took Outlook and other services offline Thursday, a spokesperson for the company said.
At least 600 flights have been diverted so far as a result of the FAA’s order to ground all air traffic nationwide.
As of 5:50 p.m. Eastern, 496 flights were diverted to the airport from where they originally took off, while 104 were sent to a different airport, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
Among the airports where many of the flights ended up being diverted are Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Denver International Airport, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Some 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to take off from airports in the U.S. after 4 p.m. Eastern, raising the likelihood of more cancellations and flight diversions.
Mexico’s federal aviation agency said Friday that all scheduled flights from Mexican airports headed to the U.S. are grounded for the time being.
FedEx, the world’s largest cargo airline, is among the parcel delivery services that are monitoring the ground stop, saying customers can track the status of their shipments through the company’s website.
“We are prepared to activate contingency plans to minimize service disruptions and will resume normal flight operations as soon as the FAA permits,” said Shannon Davis, a spokesperson for FedEx.
The FAA’s ground stop applies to all departing flights at U.S. airports and therefore affects cargo and package shipping operations that rely on air transport.
U.S. airlines move about 61,000 tons of goods — from letters to packages — to and from more than 220 countries daily, according to the industry trade group Airlines for America.
FedEx has nearly 700 aircraft that operate around the globe, shipping an average of 17 million packages and 20 million pounds of freight daily, according to the company’s website. Most of those shipments are made in the U.S.
NBA, NHL and college teams were left stranded as they tried to reach their destinations, and NFL teams were left to wonder whether the issue would be resolved in time for them to travel to their games this weekend.
Most college football teams playing Saturday travel the day before their game, and the stoppage left many schools — including No. 2 Utah, eighth-ranked Texas and No. 9 Tennessee — at a standstill as they departed for road games.
Meanwhile, the Nets were among five NBA teams scheduled to fly Friday for games on Saturday. They had just boarded the team plane in New Orleans after playing the Pelicans earlier this week when their flight to Memphis was halted in place.
There are 14 scheduled games in the NHL on Saturday. And while the Panthers made it to St. Louis for their game before the stoppage began, the Sharks were among those that were left waiting to leave for their game in Utah.
The communications problems that led to the nationwide halt to flights don’t appear to be linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there’s no indication yet that the problems are linked to the new computer system or any kind of terrorist attack.
The FAA’s SMART system is based in a single location near Washington, D.C., where a team of experts analyzes flight schedules, weather forecasts and hundreds of other streams of data. Then that office sends recommendations to the FAA’s command center that relays them to controllers across the country for consideration.
The company that designed the system, ASI, said “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.”
Travelers just passing through security at Chicago O’Hare Airport learned about the ground stop when they gazed up at screens that showed flight delays across the board.
Some called friends or family members, debating whether to stay the night in Chicago or find another way to their destinations.
Amber McQuilkin sat on a bench nearby, disappointed that she might miss a trip with friends to New York for the League of Legends world finals. Her friends, she said, had already arrived there.
“There’s not really any information being passed to me,” said the Seattle software engineer, who took a week of vacation for the trip. “I contemplated just abandoning the flight and driving, but then the more I thought about it, the more I’m like, that would be miserable.”
Austin Curtis and his wife were rethinking their trip from South Bend, Indiana, to a friend’s baby shower in Denver after getting delayed during a layover in Chicago.
They had boarded their flight to Denver from O’Hare International Airport when they were told to get off the plane.
“We did see them taking luggage off our plane and others, so we’re assuming it’s going to be a pretty substantial delay,” Curtis said.
They were unsure whether to get a hotel room or keep waiting out the delay at the airport. With care already in place for their two young children at home, they might stay the weekend in Chicago, he said.
“We might just make the most of it,” Curtis said.
Aviation professor Skip Bailey said the reason they teach them that is so they will be prepared if the radio on their plane malfunctions. He said no one expects air traffic controllers nationwide to lose the ability to communicate.
Pilots are expected to maintain the headings and vectors that controllers gave them before the problem. And then if the outage continues, they revert to following their filed flight plan. Pilots may also be able to communicate with each other over the radio even if they can’t talk to controllers. And airliners have their own radar systems.
“It’s not mass chaos out there. There’s plenty of ways to try to communicate,” said Bailey, who teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s aviation institute. “But not letting anybody take off again obviously is extremely important because we don’t want to put more aircraft into a system that’s already having an issue.”
Jeff Dubner was still waiting to disembark his plane an hour and a half after leaving the gate at Los Angeles International Airport.
His Alaska Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., was already half an hour late and was taxiing to the runway when the plane came to a halt.
Dubner heard about the nationwide ground stop from somebody behind him, he said by phone from the tarmac.
“It’s frustrating. This certainly sounds like it’s going to be more than the usual run of the mill delay. I look forward to finding out why,” said Dubner, a Washington, D.C., attorney.
But passengers were taking things in stride. Even a baby near him had calmed down, Dubner said.
Both airlines said in statements on X that flights already in the air will continue.
United Airlines said while domestic flights will not depart, “international departures are being managed on a case-by-case basis by the FAA.”
American Airlines said it expects disruptions for the rest of the day.
“It will be all hands on deck across American to get customers on their way as soon as possible when the FAA lifts this nationwide ground stop,” the airline said.
A Delta passenger flying from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale recorded video of the captain explaining the ground stop during a midair announcement.
He tells passengers that other planes will be unable to depart, but they are still on track to land at their destination within the hour, according to footage shared with The Associated Press by passenger Andrew Gillfillan.
A photo also taken by Gillfillan shows rows of passengers watching live broadcasts about the ground stop on their seatback televisions.
Sean Carey was waiting for his flight at Chicago O’Hare Airport when his grandparents and other family members called and texted him from Las Vegas to let him know about the ground stop. He was planning to travel there for a family wedding.
“I’m surprised the airport’s not in more disarray,” he said.
If he can’t get on a flight for the wedding Saturday, he only hopes he gets a refund and plans to visit another time.
“I hope everyone gets home safely and gets to where they need to go safely,” he said.
Mullin said communication systems had been affected, triggering the nationwide ground stop, but he provided few other details. He said officials continue to investigate the causes.
They are able to communicate “at certain levels,” he said. “But it’s overwhelmed some of the systems we have.”
Mullin said flights are continuing to land during the stoppage and that, for now, officials are working to “make sure” that “we get the flights down and then we get a normal operations back up.”
Mullin said it’s not yet known what caused the communications outages, but “we’re gonna find out what happened.”
He added that he’s not going to make assumptions and encouraged others to do the same.
Asked if there may be a connection to Thursday’s Microsoft outage, Mullin said officials are not ruling anything out.
Officials are dealing with midair flights on a case by case basis and working to help them land safely, he added.
“There is no indication — and we had no reason to believe that — as of right now, that this was a threat to the United States,” Mullin said.
“This was a telecommunication outage,” Mullin told reporters outside the White House.
He said details were still emerging, but that the president had been briefed.
Mullin said the immediate priority was ensuring that planes still in the air would be landing safely, but that there was no clear information on how long the stoppage might last.
He also downplayed comparisons to the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001, saying, “This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11. That’s a road I won’t go down.”
The federal agency said on social media that there has been a temporary telecommunications outage.
All flights have been accounted for and international flights will be “handled on a case by case basis,” the agency said.
“There was no indication as of yet this was a nefarious attack against us,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.
All flights in the air are accounted for, he said during a news conference, adding that the public has no reason to be afraid.
The FAA’s ground stop order runs through at least 11 p.m. ET Friday.
Passengers on an American Airlines flight from Wichita to Chicago on Friday afternoon received text messages explaining the problem as “air traffic conditions in Chicago.”
The plane sat on the runway for about an hour before the captain announced the air traffic problem seemed to be nationwide, and the plane would return to the gate.
Passengers deboarded and the airline said no one would be rebooked for at least an hour.
Former United Airlines pilot and aviation expert Steve Arroyo said the problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, except this time on a nationwide scale.
Arroyo said it could be linked to the outdated technology used by air traffic controllers.
“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground,” said Arroyo. “And not put them in the air where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them.”
A key FAA computer system malfunctioned, temporarily grounding all flights nationwide and touched off a cascading air traffic jam.
Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon because of communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.
The FAA notice said the ground stop was being imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there is a communications issue affecting the 22 regional air traffic control centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating.
This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
