Federal Aviation Administration Grounds Departing Flights Nationwide Following Telecommunications Outage

The Federal Aviation Administration halted all departing flights across the United States on Friday afternoon following a widespread telecommunications outage, grounding thousands of passengers and leaving planes stuck on airport tarmacs.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop resulted from a communication problem that affected all 22 regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers nationwide.

The systemwide suspension represents the first nationwide flight grounding in the United States since January 2023 and only the second since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Out of an abundance of caution, all flights have been halted," said the Federal Aviation Administration in a statement posted on social media.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said initial findings showed no evidence of a cyberattack or hostile action targeting the country's aviation infrastructure.

"There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us, it's just a telecommunication outage, as of right now," said Mullin.

The order forced airlines to keep aircraft at departure gates and deplane passengers, while inbound international flights and aircraft already in the air were managed on a case-by-case basis.

Terminal boarding areas quickly filled with stranded travelers across major hubs, causing long queues at security checkpoints and traffic congestion outside terminal buildings.

"So supposedly, nobody's flying, but they haven't told the public yet," said Joseph Anderson, a retired Air Force veteran stranded at the airport in Las Vegas.

An airline source cited by CNN said the agency attributed the disruption to network router issues that originated at Chicago Midway International Airport before spreading nationwide.

According to The Verge, aviation journalist Jon Ostrower reported that the agency cited multiple impacts to air traffic control frequencies and radar capabilities.

The disruption occurred months after officials announced an artificial intelligence software named SMART to manage airspace bottlenecks, though the software developer Air Space Intelligence said its system did not cause the outage.

The operational breakdown happened one day after Duffy requested $30.1 billion from Congress to upgrade and modernize the nation's air traffic control telecommunications backbone.

Technicians from the Federal Aviation Administration and multiple federal intelligence agencies continue to investigate the precise root cause of the router failure.