FAA ground stop disrupts thousands of flights as new system rollout faces technical issues
A nationwide ground stop ordered by the FAA on Friday delayed over 10,000 flights and cancelled thousands, with officials citing a faulty router during a technology upgrade as the cause.
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday evening after more than four hours of halted departures, an outage that delayed 10,543 flights and led to 3,580 cancellations, according to FlightAware. Officials said the disruption began when a contractor switched telecommunications lines from copper to fiber, causing a newly installed router to flood other routers in the air traffic control system.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters that the issue stemmed from routine maintenance and a faulty router, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no evidence of a cyber-attack and described the problem as mechanically driven. Both officials emphasized the need for a comprehensive upgrade of the aging air traffic control infrastructure.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford estimated that about 12,000 scheduled flights were cancelled on Friday and warned that up to 5,000 more could be cancelled on Saturday, but expected the system to return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The incident marks the second nationwide ground stop since the September 11 attacks, the first occurring in January 2023. During the briefing, Duffy urged Congress to provide emergency funding of $50 billion for a new air traffic control system, noting that President Donald Trump supports the effort. The previous year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the FAA’s communications system, and the FAA and the White House have now asked for an additional $30.1 billion to address further issues.