The Federal Aviation Administration says airplane departures can resume after the agency lifted a nationwide ground stop caused by communications problems.
The FAA had grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon, causing hundreds of flights to be diverted. Officials cited “extraordinary circumstances” caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.
Certain U.S. flights had already been cleared for departure, including flights within Alaska and Hawaii, as have some international flights that are departing US airspace.
This was 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.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a communications issue affected the regional air traffic control centers that direct planes between airports nationwide.
Multiple NBA, NHL and college teams were left stranded following the groundings, throwing a busy sports weekend into chaos.
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Duffy said the outage is part of an ongoing problem with outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on across the country.
“Many of our towers are almost 100 years old,” Duffy said. “Our air traffic controllers have leaky roofs. Air conditioning doesn’t work … their elevators don’t work.”
He said the network relied on “old switches, old routers” and “1980s little copper lines” that were overloaded.
Since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year, miles of old copper wires have been replaced with fiber optic lines and old radio systems are gradually being replaced at airports across the country. The White House is lobbying Congress to approve another $30 billion needed to complete the work.
Ron Schoenbaum was traveling from Santa Ana, California, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to visit his elderly parents when his connecting flight to Chicago was diverted mid-flight to Kansas City.
Schoenbaum spent nearly an hour on hold with American Airlines while also waiting in line at its service desk. He was rebooked for a flight to Miami on Friday night, though he was told the flight will likely get delayed.
“I can’t even get a hotel room because I don’t know if the flight’s going to be pushed ’til tomorrow, so I just got to wait at the airport,” he said.
Kansas City has pretty good barbecue, so he plans to check that out while he waits.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said.
Singer-songwriter Vivir Quintana was stuck in Las Vegas the day after performing at the Latin Grammys, upending plans to return to Mexico City for a performance Friday evening.
She was supposed to join Majo Aguilar as a guest artist for their performance at the country’s National Auditorium.
“We’re waiting for our suitcases — hopefully this can get resolved — but right now, all we can really do is breathe and be patient,” she said. “She’s performing there for the first time tonight — her very first time at the auditorium. My family will be there, so I’m sad about that.”
In another part of the airport, Colombian singer Esteman was also trying to figure out how to get home.
“Above all, I was really looking forward to seeing my husband — after three weeks on the road — as well as my dog,” he said.
“Is this exact thing going to happen again?” the transportation secretary told reporters. “I don’t — I don’t know that this exact scenario will happen.”
Duffy also repeatedly called on Congress to authorize billions of dollars in spending to modernize federal aviation safety.
“And so I would say, America, Congress, let’s make this system more safe,” Duffy said.
The ground stoppage left dozens of college football and other sports teams stranded or unable to depart for their weekend games.
“I would encourage those football teams to reach out to the FAA, to schedule their flight times and make sure they can move” to make their kickoff, Duffy said.
This post has been updated to correct the headline. The previous headline cited the Homeland Security secretary as saying a ‘major engineering defect’ took place. He was referring to a tanker crash in Louisiana, not the FAA ground stop.
At the time of the ground stoppage, there were 3,500 airplanes in the sky.
“And last time I looked, we had less than, 400 in the airspace,” Duffy said.
He added, “it’s going to be slow” getting air traffic back to normal.
The U.S. air traffic control system is “incredibly old” and relies on an analog system that got overloaded with data, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
“This is an emergency,” he said, calling on Congress for emergency funding for upgrades.
“There was never any lives at risk,” Mullin added. “There was no flights at risk. FAA was able to handle it. We did it out of an abundance of caution.”
The homeland security secretary sought to downplay conspiracy theories about what caused the outage.
“I do understand the internet traffic, and where all these conspiracies are running towards,” he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration says airplane departures can resume after the agency lifted a nationwide ground stop caused by communications problems.
The FAA had grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon, causing hundreds of flights to be diverted. Officials cited “extraordinary circumstances” caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.
The airline said only Europe-bound flights out of Boston Logan International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport would be able to depart Friday night.
“We expect disruptions to continue into tomorrow, including additional cancellations,” JetBlue said in a news release.
The airline said that the cancellation of all of its flights to and from the U.S. will last the rest of Friday evening.
The decision was a result of the U.S. ground stop ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Air Canada said flights between Canada, the Caribbean and South America that go through U.S. airspace could also be affected.
The White House advised that Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would deliver a briefing Friday evening on the nationwide ground stop.
The former U.S. transportation secretary briefly referenced the freeze in air transportation at the start of a convention for Democrats in Denver.
“I will be available in the hotel bar following the conference for anybody who needs to rebook their flights or get a refund, per your rights,” Buttigieg said.
He’s speaking at the “What’s Next” conference, where Democrats are gathering to celebrate their successes in last year’s midterms and discuss how to use their new congressional majorities.
This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when Buttigieg was secretary.
San Francisco airport said that flights headed across the Pacific Ocean were cleared to leave the airport starting around 5 p.m. Eastern. That includes flights destined for Hawaii and Asia.
Mullin had said earlier that international flights would be handled on a case-by-case basis.
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.
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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.”
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)
