WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — The US Federal Aviation Administration halted departing flights at every airport in the country for more than four hours on Friday after a communications failure hit its air traffic control centres, causing thousands of delays and cancellations.
The FAA issued the nationwide ground stop at 3.54pm Eastern time (01:54 on Saturday in Pakistan) and lifted it at 8.15pm (06:15 PKT), it said. In a post on X, the agency blamed “a temporary telecommunications outage” and said flights were being held as a precaution, with international flights handled case by case.
The failure affected all 22 of the country’s air route traffic control centres, which guide aircraft between airports, according to reports. More than 10,000 flights within, into, or out of the US were delayed, according to the tracking site FlightAware, and thousands more were cancelled.
‘Not another 9/11’
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters there was no indication that a threat to the US had triggered the ground stop. “Everybody’s safe. The flights are accounted for,” he said. “This is not another 9/11.”
Mullin said officials had not ruled out a link to a new artificial intelligence system for air traffic management, which the FAA began expanding across its 22 centres on 10 November. “You just can’t rule out anything at this point,” he said. Air Space Intelligence, the company behind the system, said in a post on X that its technology was not responsible.
Investigators were examining whether a software update had caused the failure, an official familiar with the matter was reported as saying. The cause has not been determined.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, the senior Democrat on the Senate aviation subcommittee, called for “a thorough and complete investigation” and said she would demand answers from the FAA.
Third nationwide stop
Only two nationwide ground stops had been ordered before: after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and in January 2023, when a key FAA computer system failed.
The disruption is the latest strain on an air traffic control system beset by equipment failures, communications problems, and shortages of controllers. Congress approved $12.5bn last year to overhaul it, and the administration asked lawmakers on Friday for a further $30.1bn, according to reports.
Airlines warned that delays and cancellations would run into the weekend as they move aircraft and crews back into position. Amtrak, the national rail operator, said its website and app were showing errors as it handled higher-than-normal call volumes.
The outage came a day after a global Microsoft outage cut off email for users in dozens of countries.
