The Federal Aviation Administration halted every departing flight in the United States on Friday afternoon after a communications failure hit the air traffic control centres that guide planes between airports.
The nationwide ground stop took effect at 3:54 p.m. ET. Planes already in the air were allowed to land, but nothing on the ground could take off.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a telecommunications outage had affected all Air Route Traffic Control Centres and that FAA technicians were investigating the cause.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters there was no sign the outage was caused by a cyberattack. “There is no prior indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us,” he said.
FlightAware counted more than 10,000 delayed flights and 2,500 cancellations by 6 p.m. ET, according to the Associated Press. At the moment the stop was issued, 4,042 flights were airborne, Flightradar24 said.
It was only the second time since the September 11, 2001 attacks that the FAA had halted all departures nationwide. The last came in January 2023, when the system that sends safety notices to pilots failed.
Departures began moving again in stages later in the evening as the control centres recovered.
Source: The Tennessean
