MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US grounds all departing flights over an air traffic control communications failure

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the failure affects the 22 regional centres that guide aircraft en route between airports and that FAA technicians are investigating

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday ordered a halt to all flights departing from the country’s airports “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”, following a communications failure affecting air traffic control centres. Thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed and hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded. The government has so far ruled out an attack.

The order took effect at around 4 p.m. US Eastern time (6 p.m. in Montevideo) and was extended until at least 11.30 p.m. Eastern time, according to TheStreet. “All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis,” the FAA said, attributing the problem to a “temporary telecommunications outage” and saying it halted flights out of an abundance of caution. Aircraft already airborne continued to their destinations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the failure affects the 22 regional centres that guide aircraft en route between airports and that FAA technicians are investigating. According to an internal Alaska Airlines message cited by CNBC, the problems affect communications and radar.

“There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious act against us. It was just a telecommunication outage, as of right now,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House, though he said all possibilities were being examined. Mullin rejected comparisons with the 2001 attacks — “This is not the same as 9/11” — and warned that the problem “is not going to be resolved in an hour”.

The most affected airports were Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare and New York’s airports, according to FlightAware. Just over two million passengers fly domestically in the US each day, and the disruption comes less than two weeks before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel period of the year. United and American Airlines said international departures were also being handled case by case.

It is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a failure of the pilot notification system halted take-offs for hours, and before that since the September 11, 2001 attacks.