In a rare move, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it was grounding all flights in the United States from departing “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety . . . until further notice,” according to NBC News.
The FAA reportedly issued the ground stop “due to several impacts to ATC [air traffic control] Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities,” with the FAA command center telling airlines it does not have further information on the “timing or cause of this outage,” aviation industry news service The Air Current reported.
Reached by Fast Company, the FAA pointed to a post on X from Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, saying the ground stop “follows a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
Duffy added: “FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House, “there is no indication that we’ve had, no reason to believe, that as of right now this was a threat to the United States,” later adding, “this was a telecommunication outage,” per CNN.
According to FlightAware.com, a live flight tracker website, there are more than 9,000 flights delayed within, into, or out of the U.S. today, with 440 flights canceled (as of 5:20 p.m. ET).
“Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis,” the FAA posted on X.
The last nationwide ground stop was on January 11, 2023, when a contractor for the FAA “unintentionally deleted files related to a key pilot safety system,” according to CNN reporting at that time. The only other time such an order was issued was following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Meanwhile, as the news broke, an unlikely celebrity, Flavor Flav, drew attention on Bluesky for “reporting” from the Atlanta airport:
This is a developing story.