The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its nationwide ground stop on Friday night, ending about four hours in which almost no commercial flights could leave a US airport.
The agency cancelled the order at about 8:19 p.m. ET, weather.com reported, after a communications outage disrupted air traffic control systems across the country. The stop began around 4 p.m. ET.
More than 9,000 flights were delayed and more than 6,000 cancelled, with over 600 diverted, weather.com reported. The disruption affected more than 15,000 flights in total.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters at the White House that the outage came from an update on a network operated by L3Harris, which overloaded routers and destabilised radar and communications. Duffy blamed outdated air traffic control technology and said the system needs a $50 billion upgrade.
Officials said there was no indication of a terrorist threat or a cyberattack.
This was only the third nationwide ground stop in US aviation history, after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and a system outage in January 2023. About 3,500 planes were in the air when the stop was issued. By 8 p.m., fewer than 400 remained airborne.
Flights began moving again on Friday night, but officials warned schedules would stay disrupted through the weekend as planes and crews sat out of position.
Source: USA Today
