FAA ground stop blamed on overloaded legacy systems, officials say
The Trump administration attributed a five-hour nationwide ground stop to new technology overwhelming older air-traffic control equipment, with no evidence of a cyberattack.
Federal officials said Friday that the addition of new equipment to the nation’s air-traffic control system overloaded older technology, creating intermittent communications and radar gaps that forced the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years. The stop, which lasted about five hours, was lifted late Friday night after more than 3,000 flights were safely landed.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that there was no indication of a cyberattack and that the issue appeared “mechanically driven.” He said the Federal Aviation Administration was installing “new equipment, new technology” that was overwhelming the older system. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the incident could recur but did not provide a timeline for a fix.
Cirium data showed at least 827 flights had been diverted, with 670 returning to their origin airports and 157 redirected to other airports, including Washington Dulles, Los Angeles International, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, and Nashville. More than 11,000 flights carrying over 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart after 4 p.m. EST.
At the time of the ground stop, about 3,500 airplanes were in the sky, down from “less than 400” later in the day, Duffy said, noting that restoring normal traffic would be gradual. He indicated that NCAA teams would be prioritized ahead of football games on Saturday and urged football teams to coordinate with the FAA for flight scheduling.
Cargo operations were also affected; FedEx said it was activating contingency plans to limit disruptions. Despite the aviation slowdown, SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from Texas on Friday.
The National Weather Service confirmed that weather radars remained fully operational, countering rumors of an outage. Officials also rejected speculation that the FAA ground stop was linked to a simultaneous Microsoft Outlook outage, with both Microsoft and the Department of Homeland Security describing the events as unrelated.