A rare nationwide ground stop affecting all departing U.S. flights, which persisted for several hours on Friday, has officially been lifted, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Both the FAA and the White House indicated that the disruption appeared to stem from a telecommunications outage.
“At 8:15 tonight, Eastern time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced during a Friday evening news briefing. “Now does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It’s going to be slow. So if you’re watching, you’re at an airport, check with your airline.”
The FAA had initially imposed the ground stop on all departing flights citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Secretary Duffy attributed the disruption to outdated air traffic control infrastructure and data-overloaded routers.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy stated at the news conference. “… Our routers actually got overloaded with data and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”
An update to the private communications network connecting America’s air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, ultimately resulting in a crash and a subsequent communications outage, according to multiple sources who spoke with CBS News earlier that day. The system is operated by L3Harris, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Duffy indicated that the FAA would make every effort to accommodate as many flights as possible Friday evening, contingent upon crew availability.
“If not, we’re going to start tomorrow [Saturday] morning with our airline partners moving those aircraft. But it’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon,” Duffy said.
He further expressed confidence that flight operations would be “back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel” during the Thanksgiving holiday period.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin addressed reporters during a briefing outside the White House earlier Friday, stating that “there was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious act against us. It was just a telecommunication outage, as of right now.”
“There is no indication, 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 throughout FAA. Out of an abundance of caution, we have grounded all the flights. And all the flights are accounted for.”
Secretary Mullin assured the public that all airborne flights would be able to land safely.
“We are assured that everybody is safe. Everybody that’s going to be in the air, that’s currently on the plane, the loved ones, as I said, we’re going to get you on the ground and we’re doing it in a safe manner,” Mullin said.
Mullin further noted that all relevant federal agencies were collaborating to address the situation.
“I don’t want to say that this is a crisis, but it is because we’re … we had to do a nationwide ground stoppage,” he acknowledged.
International flights departing from the East Coast were permitted to fly over the Atlantic Ocean, while flights originating from Jacksonville, Houston, Miami, and San Juan were allowed to depart southbound over the Gulf and Atlantic, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Flight tracking platform FlightRadar24 reported approximately 3,100 aircraft were airborne and bound for U.S. airports at the time the ground stop was implemented. Secretary Mullin confirmed that all flights already in the air were being handled on a “case-by-case” basis.
The ground stop was formally posted to the FAA’s National Airspace System Status website, and delays quickly accumulated at major airports across the country, including those in Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, New York City, Los Angeles, and Baltimore.
“This is absolutely unprecedented,” remarked Robert Sumwalt, former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board and a CBS News transportation safety expert. “I was an airline pilot for 24 years. I was in the air on 9/11. That was the last major ground stop. There was one back in 2023 for just a few hours. This is absolutely unbelievable that this could happen in this day and age.”
Within a short period, flight tracking website FlightAware recorded more than 10,000 delays and upward of 4,000 cancellations nationwide.
“By order of the Federal Aviation Command Center all airports are ground stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis,” the Air Traffic Control System Command Center stated in its official alert.
Shortly before the FAA issued the nationwide ground stop, both of Chicago’s major airports , O’Hare International and Midway International , had already been placed under a ground stop due to a localized equipment outage.
This incident draws comparisons to January 2023, when a nationwide ground stop was ordered for several hours and domestic flights experienced widespread delays following an FAA system outage. At that time, the FAA reported that its flight personnel alert system had gone offline overnight.
