The Latest: FAA grounds all flights nationwide due to communications problems

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.”

Here is the latest:

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.

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FILE - A Federal Aviation Administration logo is displayed in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of building construction projects are underway in New York on any given day. The deadly collapse of a building next to one of those work sites has raised questions about the city's oversight and the safety precautions taken by contractors.

While the investigation is ongoing, some New York officials on Friday called for the hiring of more inspectors by the city's Department of Buildings. The probe, meanwhile, is likely to focus not only on the building that fell but on an adjacent excavation site and its contractors, who had faced previous lawsuits and complaints.

Eight people were killed Wednesday when the three-story structure containing residential and commercial units in Brooklyn collapsed. It fell into a pit dug by workers excavating the site of another building that was recently demolished. Neighbors had reported feeling vibrations from the construction site, and at least one witness saw bricks falling from the building just moments before it collapsed.

Though it remains unclear how often the excavation site had been inspected, some city officials said Friday that more help is needed.

The Department of Buildings has a vacancy rate of around 9% — 168 of its 1,855 authorized positions — according to the city’s comptroller dashboard.

“We must, and we will, ensure that every single one of those positions is immediately filled,” said New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Democrat. “This is an unspeakable, horrendous tragedy, and we must meet this moment.”

Democratic City Council Member Farah Louis called for aggressive oversight.

“Grief without accountability is not enough,” Louis said. “Buildings do not simply collapse without systemic failures.”

The city has ordered inspections at more than 160 sites in New York that are associated with six entities linked to the construction and demolition site where the building collapsed, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.

It's also bringing in an engineering consulting firm to provide an independent report, which Mamdani described as "standard practice for this kind of a tragic incident.”

All contractors doing excavation work must notify New York’s Department of Buildings 24 to 48 hours in advance, according to guidelines posted on the department’s website.

A contractor on this site provided notice Sept. 9 that work would begin the following day and include rock blasting.

Permits are required for most work, which must also meet submitted plans. All projects are required to have proper precautions, such as shoring, bracing and “regularly checking walls for cracks,” the city’s website says.

If any of the work violates any rule, regulation or law, the city’s building commissioner may issue a stop work order. The Buildings Department may also conduct random audits of excavation projects to inspect shoring, groundwater, excavation depth and other things that could affect safety.

“Department site monitoring does not relieve engineers and contractors of their professional responsibilities,” the city’s website says.

Developers at the excavation site had been approved for work on a three-story building. They subsequently sought to amend that to a nine-story, mixed-use building with 64 dwelling units, but that had not been approved at the time of the nearby building collapse, the Department of Buildings said Friday.

Contractors involved in the demolition and excavation of the property next to the collapsed building had faced previous complaints and alleged violations.

In March, the city issued a stop work order after inspectors concluded the building was being demolished without adequate overhead protection. In April, inspectors found that the demolition work had resumed in violation of that order, the department said, but work was allowed to continue after the problems were corrected.

The general contractor, Townhouse Builders Inc., which also operates as Promont, was accused in a lawsuit of causing extensive damage to an adjacent building during renovation work in Manhattan in 2016. Townhouse denied the allegations in court papers, and the suit appears to have been settled out of court.

Townhouse was also accused in a lawsuit of damaging and compromising the structural integrity of adjacent buildings while performing excavation, pile driving and steel beam installation for a six-story hotel project in Brooklyn in 2016.

The damage included a breached wall, shifting, settlement and cracking, according to the lawsuit, which accused Townhouse of failing to perform a physical inspection prior to excavation and failing to properly support the property’s walls.

Townhouse’s lawyers reached agreements four times to delay their deadline to submit a written answer to the claims but never did. Nothing has been posted to the docket since 2022.

The owner of Townhouse did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The building that collapsed had a long history of citations for housing code violations, including ones this year for exposed wiring, a sprinkler-system problem, a roof leak and more, city records show. They list over 90 unresolved violations going back to the 1970s.

Building violations are meted out separately, and the structure has been cited in recent years for such things as having an unpermitted advertising sign and failing to file a required gas pipe inspection report, records show.

Messages seeking comment were sent to possible email addresses and phone numbers for the owner, and a message was left with an attorney who may have represented the owner in the past.

The investigation into Wednesday's building collapse should look into whether the designs that were submitted were adequate and, if they were, whether the contractor doing the work made a mistake, said Abi Aghayere, a professor of civil engineering at Drexel University who studies structural systems and why they fail.

“With an old building like this, the room for error is very, very, very, very slim,” Aghayere said.

There are four main possible causes for failure in a project that involves excavating adjacent to an existing building, he said. One is that vibration caused by the work could transmit to the nearby building and weaken the structure, he said.

A question investigators will need to look into is whether the integrity of the building that collapsed was being monitored during the work, Aghayere said.

Two other possibilities are that the shoring in place for the excavation work was not strong or stiff enough, he said. A fourth cause could be seepage of groundwater that caused the soil under the existing building to shift, destabilizing the property, he said.

Everyone — tenants, building owners and landlords — has a responsibility to report anything unusual they see, particularly in older buildings, Aghayere said.

“You might see a crack, don’t take it lightly,” he said. “That crack might be that building just crying out and saying, 'Help, help. I’m about to go.'”

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri; Bauer from Madison, Wisconsin; and Brook from New Orleans. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.

New York City Department of Buildings employees stand on a rooftop during their investigation of a building that collapsed the previous day in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

First responders rescue a person after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Ciahola Lawrence, a resident of the Brooklyn building that partially collapsed, becomes emotional as she speaks during a news conference surrounded by public officials and community members in New York, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Rev. Al Sharpton speaks during a news conference surrounded by public officials and community members in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

First responders work the scene after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)