FAA orders nationwide ground stop across the U.S.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop Friday (Nov. 13) afternoon following a communications outage affecting air traffic control facilities across the United States.

The agency instructed all departing aircraft to remain on the ground until further notice, citing safety concerns and what it described as “extraordinary circumstances," reports the New York Times.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the disruption in a social media post, describing it as “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”

“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy wrote. 

“We will provide immediate updates as we have them."

According to an FAA advisory, the restrictions applied to all U.S. airports, while arriving international flights would be assessed individually to determine whether they could land.

The ground stop began shortly before 4 p.m. E.S.T., potentially disrupting thousands of flights.

Aviation tracking app Flighty indicated that more than 30,000 arrivals and departures remained scheduled for Friday.

Earlier Friday, the FAA had suspended flights bound for Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports because of equipment issues. 

Equipment-related departure delays were also reported at airports serving Newark, Las Vegas, Teterboro, Orlando, Houston and Phoenix.

The disruption marks only the third nationwide ground stop issued by the FAA in recent history.

Previous nationwide restrictions were imposed on Sept. 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks in New York, and on Jan. 11, 2023, when a failure involving the FAA's pilot safety notification system disrupted air travel across the country.

The 2023 outage, which resulted from contractors unintentionally deleting system files, delayed thousands of flights.

Friday's disruption could have consequences extending into the weekend, particularly if prolonged delays force airlines to cancel flights as crew members approach federally mandated working-hour limits.

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