The FAA halted departing flights across the US on Friday after communications problems hit multiple air traffic control centers. Officials said there was no indication of an attack, and the agency has not said when departures will resume.
The Federal Aviation Administration halted departing flights nationwide on Friday, a rare measure, after reporting communications issues affecting multiple air traffic control centers. A ground stop holds flights at their departure point, and the agency said departing traffic was halted until further notice.
What officials said about the outage
The FAA said in a post on X that a temporary telecommunications outage led it to halt flights as a precaution. Its technicians are investigating, the agency said.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke about a possible attack. According to Investing.com, Mullin said: "There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack."
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stop followed a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Asked whether a new AI tool the FAA deployed the same day, called SMART, might be related, Mullin said that is what officials are looking at, according to Business Insider.
Delays build across airports
Airlines said flights already in the air would continue. Cirium counted 11,000 flights scheduled to depart U.S. airports after 4 p.m. ET on Friday. At least 7,000 flights had been delayed, per Flightradar24, according to Business Insider.
Delays at Chicago O'Hare were 90 minutes and rising, while the average delay at Newark was more than 75 minutes. Inbound international flights would be managed case by case, the FAA said.
CNBC noted that disruptions tend to snowball if ground stops drag on, because flight crews reach their maximum number of duty hours for a day. The last nationwide ground stop came in January 2023, after an outage of the agency's Notice to Air Missions system, and it lasted about 90 minutes, according to Investing.com.
Sources: CNBC, Investing.com, Business Insider
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