FAA Orders Nationwide Ground Stop Across the United States
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop across the United States, holding departures at every airport in the country because of a communication problem that reached air traffic control.
The agency's alert said the stop had been called "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety", and it applies at all airports rather than only those in one region. It gave no estimate of how long the order would stay in place or how many flights it would hold on the ground.
And the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said on X a short while later that the stop followed "a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers", adding that FAA technicians were investigating the fault.
Those centres direct every flight above 18,000 feet, and there are 22 of them in the United States, which is why a communications failure inside them reaches the whole country rather than a single region or a single airline's network.
Pilots already in the air are not stuck by the order. John Nance, an ABC News contributor, said aircraft carry their flight plans and crews are prepared to continue in an emergency, and he told the network that "all pilots in that environment know what to do".
But the national order came after a smaller one the same afternoon, when the FAA stopped flights at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports because of an equipment outage, and the agency has not yet established whether the two failures share a cause or whether the Chicago fault was the first sign of the wider one.
It is only the second nationwide ground stop since the 2001 attacks. The last came in 2023, when the system known as NOTAM, which pilots use to collect their pre departure paperwork, went down and they could not get it before take off.
The agency has not named the systems involved in the communications failure, has not said how many flights are affected, and has not said whether the Chicago outage is connected to it.
So departures across the United States are held until FAA technicians clear the fault, and the agency has not said when that will be.
The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop across the United States
It cited a communication issue affecting all air traffic control centres
The 22 centres handle every flight above 18,000 feet
A smaller ground stop hit Chicago's O'Hare and Midway earlier in the afternoon
Only one other nationwide stop has been ordered since the 2001 attacks
Source: ABC News
