US federal aviation authorities grounded all departing flights across the United States late on Friday due to a widespread telecommunications outage impacting air traffic control centres, as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stressed there is no indication of a hostile attack.
Speaking to reporters at the White House shortly after midnight GMT, Mullin confirmed that all airborne aircraft were accounted for and sought to quell public alarm by drawing a distinction between Friday’s shutdown and the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.
”Everybody’s safe,” Mullin said, adding that the disruption was not “another 9/11”.
He attributed the failure to a telecommunications outage and stated there was no reason to link the aviation disruption to a concurrent Microsoft service outage.
“We have not discussed any time frame,” Mullin noted regarding the restoration of services. “It’s going to take some time.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the nationwide ground stop at approximately 23:21 GMT on Friday, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”.
The directive ordered all departing traffic to remain grounded until further notice, while inbound international flights are being managed on a case-by-case basis.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that the disruption stemmed from a communication failure affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers—the regional facilities responsible for directing high-altitude air traffic between airports.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them,” Duffy said.
Flight-tracking platform Flightradar24 reported that approximately 3,100 airborne aircraft were bound for US airports when the order took effect, with no new departures taking off.
Major hubs—including Atlanta, Washington’s Reagan National, Miami, Baltimore-Washington (BWI), and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental—confirmed full ground stops, while the FAA warned of stops and severe delays at Los Angeles (LAX), New York’s JFK, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia.
At airports including LAX and Austin, passengers reported being held on stationary planes on the tarmac because grounded departure aircraft blocked terminal gates.
Countrywide ground stops are exceptionally rare in the United States.
Prior to Friday’s shutdown, the last countrywide halt occurred in January 2023 following an outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) pilot notification system.
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