Nationwide FAA Ground Stop Halts All U.S. Flights After Telecom Outage

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports on Friday after a telecommunications outage disrupted the Air Route Traffic Control Centres, officials said. FAA technicians began investigating the problem, which the agency described on X as a “temporary telecommunications outage” and said the action was taken “out of an abundance of caution.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a threat, adding that officials were not ruling out any possibilities. “There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us, it’s just a telecommunication outage,” he said.

The grounding, the first nationwide stop since the 9/11 attacks and a brief incident in January 2023, left tens of thousands of passengers at airports across the country. At LaGuardia Airport in New York, a traveler reported repeated delays to her flight to Orlando, while at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, airline staff gave conflicting estimates of the stop’s duration, ranging from eight to 24 hours.

The FAA order came a day after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy asked Congress for $30 billion to modernise the national air traffic control system, describing the investment as essential for a resilient telecommunications backbone and upgraded infrastructure. The same day, Microsoft issued an apology for a separate global outage affecting its services, ruling out malicious cyber or AI activity.

Passengers described the situation as chaotic, with some being pulled from planes moments before departure and others receiving mixed messages about the cause of delays. Rental car lines grew long as travelers sought alternatives, and boarding passes continued to display scheduled departure times despite the ground stop.