In a rare move, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday that it was grounding all flights in the United States and Canada from departing “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety . . . until further notice,” according to NBC News.
The FAA reportedly issued the ground stop “due to several impacts to ATC [air traffic control] Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities,” with the FAA command center telling airlines it does not have further information on the “timing or cause of this outage,” aviation industry news service The Air Current reported.
United States Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in a post on X that the ground stop “follows a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them,” he added.
According to CNN, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House “there is no indication that we’ve had, no reason to believe, that as of right now this was a threat to the United States,” later adding “this was a telecommunication outage.”
Fast Company has reached out to the FAA for comment.
According to FlightAware.com, a live flight tracker website, there are more than 9,000 flights delayed within, into, or out of the United States today, with 440 flights canceled (as of 5:20 p.m. ET). “Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis,” per Axios.
The last nationwide ground stop was on January 11, 2023 when a contractor for the FAA had “unintentionally deleted files related to a key pilot safety system,” according to CNN reporting at that time. Prior to that, an order was issued following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Meanwhile, as the news broke, an unlikely celebrity, Flavor Flav, drew attention on Bluesky for “reporting” from the Atlanta airport:
This is a developing story…
