The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, halting all departing flights across the United States due to widespread communication failures affecting regional air traffic control facilities.
The directive, issued just before 4 p.m. ET, bars all aircraft from taking off from U.S. airports “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” according to an advisory from the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center. While the initial advisory said that traffic would remain halted until further notice, the order is currently scheduled to remain in effect until 11 p.m. ET.
Inbound international flights are not included in the blanket ban and are being managed on a case-by-case basis.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on social media that the agency enacted the emergency measure “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” These regional centers are responsible for tracking and managing high-altitude flights as they travel across the country. Duffy noted that FAA technicians have been deployed to investigate the root cause of the failure, and an agency spokesperson confirmed that updates will be provided as the situation develops.
According to two FAA sources familiar with the incident, the disruption was triggered by a “rolling frequency outage” across facilities that monitor airborne traffic.
Federal officials were adamant the issue was not a national security issue or terrorist threat. “This is not a 9-11 situation,” Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of Homeland Security, said in a news briefing late Friday. “It is a telecommunications outage.”
The sudden halt caught both flight crews and local airport towers off guard. In air traffic control audio recordings from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, the pilot of Delta Air Lines Flight 869 was heard questioning controllers about the abrupt order to hold departures.
“Why is there a ground stop?” the pilot asked.
“Uh, we are not aware of a reason,” the air traffic controller replied. “We just know it’s indefinite and U.S.-wide.”
A nationwide ground stop is an exceedingly rare event in American aviation, typically reserved for severe national security threats or catastrophic system failures. Friday’s shutdown marks the first time the FAA has grounded all domestic departures since January 2023, when an outage in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) pilot notification system forced thousands of cancellations and delays across the country.
Prior to the 2023 incident, the United States had not experienced a complete nationwide ground stop since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The incident marks the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023. The system failure caused a cascading air traffic jam, leaving passengers stranded as officials worked to resolve the technical breakdown.
Aviation experts suggest the disruption stems from aging federal infrastructure. Former United Airlines pilot Steve Arroyo noted that the incident mirrors a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast — only this time on a national scale.
Arroyo pointed to outdated technology used by air traffic controllers as a likely culprit behind the failure. Without reliable communication channels, aviation authorities have no choice but to halt departures immediately to ensure passenger safety.
“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground,” Arroyo said. “And not put them in the air where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them.”
With the restriction slated to last through the evening rush, travelers across the country face significant delays and cascading cancellations as aviation officials work to restore reliable communications and safely clear the backlog of grounded aircraft.
