The FAA says airplane departures can resume after lifting a nationwide ground stop that officials blamed on overloaded air traffic control equipment.
The Story
The Federal Aviation Administration says airplane departures can resume following the lift of a nationwide ground stop implemented for the United States on Friday evening.
According to Trump administration officials, new technology being added to the air traffic control system overloaded parts of the system and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, prompting what they described as the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years.
The ground stop was lifted after a five-hour period during which most flights were not allowed to take off from airports in the U.S. Officials said more than 3,500 airplanes were in the sky at the time of the stoppage, and more than 3,000 flights were safely landed.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in danger. He said the FAA was installing “new equipment, new technology” and that the change was “overwhelming the older system.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he could not guarantee the disruption would not happen again. He also said the problems were not linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky, adding that “This is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that’s been deployed did not go down.”
Officials said there was no indication of a cyberattack. Mullin said there were no “footprints” showing an attack and that the problem appeared to be “mechanically driven,” while officials continued looking for the cause.
Data cited from Cirium indicated that by 7:05 p.m. EST, 670 flights were sent back to the airport from where they originally took off and 157 were redirected to a different airport. At least 827 flights had been diverted.
A limited number of domestic flights began departing after the ground stop was lifted, but officials said it will likely take days for airlines to fully recover because aircraft and crews were out of position.
Authorities said they expect the system to be back to normal in time for the Thanksgiving travel rush. Duffy also said it is possible further disruptions could occur, noting, “We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did.”
The stoppage affected thousands of flights. Officials said 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to take off from U.S. airports after 4 p.m. EST, and some flights were diverted to airports including Washington Dulles International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Nashville International Airport.
The FAA described the interruption as connected to older infrastructure. Duffy said the agency has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of an overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion of funding, with the White House and Duffy pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.
The story said the situation differed from some past disruptions, including the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when aircraft were not being told to land immediately and pilots were likely able to communicate with ground controllers at airports.
Separate reporting from the same evidence noted the ground stop was the first since January 2023, when another key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned.
← More stories