Telecom outage prompts FAA ground stop that shuts down flights nationwide

Nationwide halt disrupts flights

Takeoffs at airports across the country largely stopped Friday after the FAA imposed a national ground stop, citing safety and “extraordinary circumstances.” Aircraft already in the air were permitted to land. In a post just after 5PM ET, the FAA said a temporary telecommunications outage had led it to halt flights as a precaution. It said every flight had been accounted for, with international flights to be addressed individually.

FlightAware reported 10,494 US flights delayed and 3,396 canceled as of 6:16PM ET. NBC News and The New York Times reported that some flights bound for Europe and Asia departed from Boston and New York.

Officials assess possible causes

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that officials had no reason to suspect a cyberattack or another national security threat. He also said there was no known link to a recent Microsoft Outlook outage, while noting that investigators had not ruled out any cause.

Asked whether the outage could be connected to the cloud-based SMART airspace system, activated nationwide on November 10th, Mullin said officials were looking into it. Air Space Intelligence, which designed SMART, denied that its system or products caused the ground stop.

The company received a 12-year, $875 million contract in June to deploy the system. It said the ground stop was not based on SMART or its integration with the FAA and air traffic control.

Problems reported across centers

Jon Ostrower of The Air Current reported that the outage began at the Chicago air traffic control center, then affected centers in Boston, Washington, New York and Minneapolis. More facilities reported problems as the FAA imposed a ground stop for aircraft flying east.

Ostrower said the disruption affected radar and radio frequencies used by controllers and pilots. A CNN update, citing an unnamed source, said the FAA did not yet know what was happening and had no clear explanation for the cause.

Earlier ground stop history

CNN reported that the previous nationwide ground stop, in 2023, lasted about 90 minutes after the NOTAM system for pilots failed. The last nationwide stop before that followed the September 11th, 2001 attacks.