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.
Here is the latest:
FAA says systems were ‘thoroughly tested’ before ground stop was lifted
The FAA said in a statement that they “thoroughly tested” their systems to confirm they were stable and reliable before clearing flights to resume.
Some flights are departing, and passengers are asked to contact their airlines for flight updates.
Passenger stuck on plane for 5 hours at Los Angeles airport
Ruth Coles has been stuck on her plane that landed at Los Angeles International Airport from Newark because there are no gates for them to use.
She was flying Alaska Airlines to visit her sister and attend a festival when she learned about the ground stoppage mid-flight.
Passengers have been told that they are waiting for a gate to open up, she said.
“The pilot keeps saying they are telling him we are next in line,” Coles said, but that was several hours ago.
Coles said they have been given soft drinks and cookies and been allowed to use the restroom.
Frustrated, she posted on X multiple times asking the airport for help and she messaged Alaska Airlines support. The airline told her they were trying to park the flight in a remote area and provide bus transportation back to the terminal.
Passengers still without updates following lifting of ground stop
Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter were heading to the Dallas airport to take a flight to Columbus, Ohio, when they got the alert of the ground stop. She didn’t know how long that would last, so they decided to keep going.
They’ve been at the airport for more than four hours, and even though the ground stop was lifted, nobody has given any updates, she said Friday evening.
“They aren’t communicating anything,” Brown said. “We’re just waiting. All of us passengers are kind of learning information from each other.”
Brown took off a half day from work as a special education paraprofessional to travel with her daughter to surprise her daughter’s best friend.
Brown’s husband is coming to pick them up from Fort Worth, and they are hoping to head to Ohio tomorrow.
Airlines won’t be required to offer passengers any additional compensation
An FAA computer problem is considered outside the control of the airlines — much like the weather.
So the only thing the airlines are obligated to do is to offer free rebooking on another flight for travelers that want to continue to their destinations or a refund if their flight was canceled and they decide not to take the trip.
Officials call for emergency funding to fix aging air traffic control infrastructure
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.
Ground stop delays plans for a passenger’s visit with elderly parents
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.
Mexican singer stranded in Las Vegas after Latin Grammys
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.
Duffy says no guarantee scenario won’t repeat itself
“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.
Duffy says NCAA teams to be prioritized ahead of football Saturday
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.
Homeland Security secretary says mix of new and old technology caused outage
Mullin said the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system overwhelmed it. The system needs funding for a complete overhaul, he said, estimating a $50 billion price tag. ___
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.
Duffy says getting planes back in the air will take some time
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.
Transportation secretary says outages caused by overload of old system
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.
Mullin says no indication FAA communications failure was related to a cyberattack
“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.
FAA says airplane departures can resume
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.
JetBlue cancels all remaining domestic flights Friday evening
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.
Air Canada cancels flights between the US and Canada
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.
White House briefing will begin shortly
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.
Pete Buttigieg jokes about helping people rebook flights
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.
Some international flights are being allowed to take off because they are departing US airspace
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.
Alaska Airlines says flights within Alaska and Hawaii not impacted
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.
National Weather Service says there’s no weather radar outage
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 suspends US-bound flights
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 says outages are unrelated
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.
Hundreds of flights have been diverted
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.
Flights from Mexico to US to remain grounded
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.
Cargo flights also delayed by FAA ground stop
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.
Sports weekend thrown into chaos as teams get stranded in airports
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.
Communications problems don’t appear linked to new FAA computer system
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.”
Chicago travelers learn about ground stop as they leave security
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.”
Couple headed to a Denver baby shower get an extended stop in Chicago
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.
Pilots are trained how to handle losing communications with air traffic controllers
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.”
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