FAA Ground Stop Halts US Takeoffs After Telecommunications Outage

The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures from airports across the US on Friday after a telecommunications outage, the agency said in a post on X just after 5 p.m. ET. Planes already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations and land, while flights waiting at the gate stayed on the ground.

The FAA called the outage temporary and said it stopped all flights “out of an abundance of caution.” It added that every flight had been accounted for and that international flights would be decided case by case.

What failed inside the air traffic system

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the nationwide ground stop followed a communication problem affecting all of the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers, and that agency technicians were investigating. According to Jon Ostrower of The Air Current, the FAA told airlines the stop was due to several problems with air traffic control radio frequencies or radar capabilities.

No official cause has been announced. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that there was currently no reason to suspect a cyberattack or another national security threat, though he said no cause had been ruled out yet. He also said officials saw no link to the recent Microsoft Outlook outage, and Microsoft said in a post on X that its own outage was unrelated.

The SMART system question

Asked whether the problem could involve SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories), a cloud-based AI system that the FAA recently expanded nationwide, Mullin said officials were looking into it. Air Space Intelligence, which holds a 12-year, $875 million contract to deploy SMART and other systems, rejected any connection. The company said on X that the stop was not caused by SMART, by any of its products or by its integration with the FAA and air traffic control.

How many flights are affected

The flight tracking site FlightAware showed 10,494 US flights delayed as of 6:16 p.m. ET, The Verge reported. Some international departures still went out: NBC News and The New York Times reported that several flights bound for Europe and Asia took off from Boston and New York.

As of the latest reports, the FAA had not said when departures would resume or whether the communication problem had been fixed.

Why it matters for travelers

A ground stop covering the whole country almost never happens. According to CNN, the previous one came in 2023, when the NOTAM system that delivers Notices to Air Missions to pilots went down, and that stop lasted about 90 minutes. Before 2023, US departures were last halted nationwide after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Yahoo Finance noted.

The stop comes during a run of technology failures at airlines. Earlier this week the FAA grounded all JetBlue flights at the airline’s request during what JetBlue called a brief system outage, and the agency lifted that stop about 40 minutes later, Spectrum News reported. Alaska Airlines grounded its planes for hours in October because of an information technology outage, and in August a technology issue at United Airlines delayed more than 1,000 flights.

What travelers can check

Updates on the ground stop are coming from the FAA and Secretary Duffy, who said the department would share new information as soon as it had it. People with flights scheduled Friday evening can check their airline’s app or website for the status of their own flight, since international flights are being handled one at a time.

Sources: The Verge, Yahoo Finance, Spectrum News