Mere days after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dramatically expanded the use of an AI air traffic control tool nationwide, the agency issued an extremely rare ground stop for all flights in the entire country this afternoon. Secretary of transportation Sean Duffy tweeted that the ground stop is “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” adding that “FAA technicians are investigating the issue.” While it remains unclear whether the Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART) system is connected to the first full ground stop since…
