FAA grounds all U.S. departures in nationwide stop, the longest in 25 years
A telecommunications outage forced the FAA to halt every U.S. departure on Friday, stranding more than a million travelers in the second nationwide ground stop since 9/11.
Every departure, held on the ground
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 p.m. ET on Friday, holding every departing flight in the United States on the ground 'due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.' Flights already in the air were allowed to land, and international flights were handled case by case.
More than 3,500 airplanes were in the sky when the order came, and all of them landed safely. About 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to take off after 4 p.m. ET. The FAA lifted the stop at 8:15 p.m. ET, after more than four hours, in what the Associated Press called the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years. It was the second nationwide halt of all departures since the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the first since January 2023, when a computer failure disrupted the system that sends notices to pilots.
What overloaded the system
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the trouble began at 3:36 p.m. ET, when radar and communications became unstable in control centers and terminal facilities across the country. The system's switches and routers 'got overloaded with data' and began giving inconsistent readings, and the system was shut down because of it.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the FAA was installing new equipment and technology that was 'overwhelming the older system.' He said there was no sign of a cyberattack and the problem appears 'mechanically driven,' though officials were still looking for the cause. Duffy said the failure was not linked to the FAA's new artificial intelligence system, which was not connected to what failed. 'This is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that has been deployed did not go down,' he said.
Duffy said he could not promise it would not happen again. 'We didn't think we would have this kind of outage. We did,' he said, adding, 'you will have more of these.'
A system running on borrowed time
Congress approved $12.5 billion last year to upgrade the FAA's antiquated air traffic control systems and hire more controllers, and the Trump administration wants Congress to approve another $30 billion to finish the work. The FAA has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems.
The outage was the latest in a pattern. On September 21, an eight-hour halt stopped flights to New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington after a regional facility's primary and backup data links failed, delaying or canceling about 9,500 flights. In January 2023, a 90-minute nationwide stop followed a failure in the system that sends notices to pilots, disrupting more than 10,000 flights.
At least 827 flights were diverted on Friday, according to Cirium: 670 were sent back to the airport they took off from, and 157 were redirected elsewhere. Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights and delayed nearly 10,000, according to FlightAware. It will likely take days for airlines to fully recover, with planes and crews out of position, though Duffy said he expects the system to be back to normal in time for the Thanksgiving travel rush. FedEx said it activated contingency plans; U.S. airlines move about 61,000 tons of goods to and from more than 220 countries every day.
- 3:54 p.m. ETNationwide ground stop ordered
- 8:15 p.m. ETGround stop lifted, more than four hours later
- 11,000 flightsScheduled to depart after 4 p.m. ET, carrying over 1.5 million passengers
- 827 flightsDiverted; 670 returned to origin and 157 went elsewhere
- More than 1,000Flights canceled, and nearly 10,000 delayed
