The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for all flights in the United States on Friday, delaying or canceling more than 11,000 journeys according to flight tracker FlightAware. The directive threw airports across the country into sudden chaos.
Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said in a post on X that the stoppage was due to a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. He added that FAA technicians were looking into the matter.
A notice from the FAA stated that the ground stop was imposed due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security director, told reporters in a news conference that preliminary investigations did not indicate a nefarious attack.
There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against it, Mullin told reporters, describing the incident as a telecommunications outage. He added that officials were not ruling out anything at that point.
Mullin stated that the immediate priority was ensuring that planes still in the air would land safely. Officials noted there was no clear information on how long the stoppage might last.
Router malfunctions originating at Chicago Midway airport are believed to have caused the outages, according to CNN, which rippled across the rest of the country. At Ronald Reagan Washington national airport, gate agents and travelers refreshed their phones for updates while nearly every seat was filled and some passengers sat on the floor.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said she was in close contact with leadership at Los Angeles World Airports to receive real-time updates and assess impacts. California governor Gavin Newsom called on the Trump administration to offer more clarity to stranded passengers.
US congressman Ro Khanna told CNN that he was waiting for a congressional briefing on what led to the technical issues and the ground stop. There is a lot of nervousness, Khanna said of the mood among travelers.
International routes also faced disruption. British Airways canceled a flight to New York from Heathrow on Friday night, while Manchester airport confirmed that three US-bound Virgin Atlantic flights scheduled for Saturday morning were likely to be affected.
An FAA ground-stop order requires aircraft to remain on the ground and bars them from taking off, though planes already airborne are usually permitted to continue their flights. This marks the third time all departing flights have been grounded nationally in the United States, following similar occurrences on September 11, 2001, and in January 2023.
Congress approved 12.5 billion dollars last year to fix the aging communications system at the FAA. On Friday, the agency and the White House asked lawmakers for an additional 30.1 billion dollars to address other issues.
