Trump administration coordinates response to FAA nationwide ground stop
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President Trump was briefed within 30 minutes of the FAA's nationwide ground stop, prompting an interagency effort that lifted the halt after four hours and canceled thousands of flights.
President Trump was informed within 30 minutes after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, U.S. officials said. The FAA announced that all planes would be grounded at 3:36 p.m. ET while about 3,500 flights were in the air, leading to thousands of cancellations and stranded travelers.
Within minutes, the FBI, the director of national intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Department, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command, the FAA and FEMA began communicating with each other. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at 4:16 p.m. ET that the stop was necessary because of "a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers" and that FAA technicians were investigating.
The White House convened a call led by chief of staff Stephen Miller to determine the cause and develop a response plan. The intelligence community preliminarily ruled out nefarious activity after searching its channels for relevant chatter.
Senior staff briefed Mr. Trump, who was in an economic policy meeting, and his directives were relayed to the interagency call. Later, Mr. Trump met with Secretary Duffy and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. He also began contacting congressional leaders to discuss additional FAA funding and air-traffic-controller modernization.
The Homeland Security Council scheduled a meeting on Monday with key government officials and outside stakeholders to discuss steps to prevent a recurrence as modernization efforts continue.
Medical-service flights were exempted from the grounding. By the fourth hour, the problem was identified and the stop was lifted. FlightAware reported about 9,159 flights canceled and 7,190 delayed on Friday.
At a Saturday news conference, Duffy said the issue began when FAA telecommunications contractor L3Harris Technologies performed maintenance at a remote facility, replacing aging copper lines with fiber optic connections. A router generated more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, overwhelming the FAA network.
Both Mullin and Duffy arrived more than 30 minutes late to a 7:45 p.m. ET press conference because they were finalizing the lifting of the grounding, officials said.
Federal officials have identified a likely sequence of events behind the disruption, but questions remain about the underlying cause of the system-wide failure.