Nov. 13 (UPI) — The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its nationwide ground stop Friday evening after a telecommunications outage halted flights across the United States for more than four hours.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. EST but warned that flight disruptions would continue.
“But it’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon,” Duffy said during a news briefing at the White House.
Duffy said the outage began when new technology overwhelmed the FAA’s aging communications network, causing instability in radar data.
The problem began at 3:36 p.m. EST, affecting all 22 air route traffic control centers.
Duffy said technicians had identified the problem and restored operations. He denied that the FAA’s new Smart air traffic management system caused the outage.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had no indication the disruption was a terrorist attack.
“This isn’t another 9/11,” Mullin told reporters at the White House. “This is a telecommunication outage.”
Mullin said investigators had found “zero evidence that this was a cyber-attack.”
He said the disruption appeared to have been caused by older equipment becoming overwhelmed as new technology was introduced.
Duffy called on Congress to approve an additional $30 billion to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system.
“I can’t build things if I don’t have money,” he said.
Duffy warned that the disruptions could continue into the weekend, ahead of the Thanksgiving travel period.
In an advisory shared by Flightradar24, the agency cited extraordinary circumstances and safety concerns amid reports of communication outages in parts of the country.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy said in a statement on X. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”
Before the nationwide order, the FAA had issued separate ground stops for flights headed to Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway international airports, citing an equipment outage.
The restrictions began at 2:10 p.m. CST at O’Hare and 2:17 p.m. at Midway and were initially scheduled to remain in effect until 3:30 p.m.
Nearly 5,000 flights were canceled by 7:45 p.m. EST, with hundreds more cancellations already scheduled for Saturday.
At least 600 flights were diverted during the shutdown, including flights redirected to airports in Washington, Chicago, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth.
At least 21,504 flights were delayed and 923 canceled as of Friday afternoon, according to FlightAware.
The last time there was a nationwide ground stop in the United States was in January 2023, when private contractors inadvertently deleted files pertaining to the Notice to Air Missions system.
This is a developing story.
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