The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for departing flights on Friday afternoon after a telecommunications outage affected multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The order was issued around 3:54 p.m. ET “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” Aircraft already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, and inbound international flights were handled on a case-by-case basis.
Here's a press conference of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin & Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy: [VIDEO]
The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET, after roughly four hours and twenty minutes. Transportation Secretary Duffy said the airspace had reopened, though recovery would be gradual as airlines assessed crew availability and repositioned aircraft. Flight tracking services reported thousands of cancellations and delays by Friday evening, with disruptions continuing into Saturday.
Officials attributed the disruption to a communications issue impacting radar and radio systems at en-route centers. Homeland Security Secretary Mullin said there was no indication of a cyberattack or other threat, describing it as a telecommunications outage. Duffy later pointed to overloaded legacy switches and routers on older network equipment.
The incident occurred while Microsoft was still recovering from a separate Microsoft 365 outage that began Thursday and affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot, and related services for businesses and governments worldwide. Microsoft and federal officials stated there was no indication the two events were connected. The Microsoft disruption was described as a technical issue stemming from a prior network capacity upgrade.
Nationwide ground stops of this scale have been rare. On September 11, 2001, the FAA ordered a full stop of civilian departures and directed all airborne aircraft to land at the nearest suitable airport following the terrorist attacks; U.S. airspace remained closed to most commercial traffic until September 13. On January 11, 2023, the FAA paused domestic departures for roughly 90 minutes after a failure in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which provides pilots with safety notices; flights already in the air continued, and departures resumed by about 9 a.m. ET. No other nationwide ground stops of comparable scope have been reported in the intervening years.
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