A rare nationwide ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all US flight departures and disrupted landings across the country, affecting thousands of travelers. According to the FAA, the sweeping operational pause—which began on Friday—was triggered by a “temporary telecommunications outage”.
The nationwide restriction grounded flights for more than four hours before the FAA lifted the order at 8.15pm ET Friday. The FAA stated that every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
During a White House briefing, Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, and Markwayne Mullin, homeland security secretary, appeared to suggest that the cause of Friday’s outage was related to network delivery. Last year, Congress approved $12.5bn to fix the FAA’s ageing communications system, and on the day of the incident, the FAA and White House asked Congress for another $30.1bn to address other issues.
Friday's order marked only the second nationwide ground stop of all departures since the 9/11 attacks. The previous one came in January 2023, when the FAA paused all domestic departures for less than two hours.
