WASHINGTON, United States – The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted departures from all US airports on Friday after a telecommunications failure disrupted communications at air traffic control centres across the country.
The rare nationwide ground stop was imposed under what the FAA described as “extraordinary circumstances” and for safety reasons, affecting flights scheduled to leave US airports while authorities worked to restore communication systems.
The incident has become one of the most significant disruptions to US aviation in years, not because aircraft were ordered out of the sky, but because the country’s aviation regulator concluded it was safer to keep additional flights on the ground.
Flights already in the air continued towards their destinations, with officials saying aircraft had been accounted for and international arrivals would be handled on a case-by-case basis.
The FAA’s public flight-status dashboard was no longer listing a nationwide ground stop early Saturday, East Africa Time, signalling that the emergency restriction had been lifted or eased.
However, passengers could still face widespread delays and cancellations as airlines work through disrupted aircraft schedules and stranded crews.
Third nationwide ground stop in 25 years
Friday’s aviation shutdown is historic, but it should not be described as the first since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The FAA also imposed a nationwide ground stop on January 11, 2023, after a failure in its Notice to Air Missions system, which gives pilots critical safety information before take-off.
Before that, the last nationwide order came after the September 11 attacks, when US aviation authorities shut down the country’s airspace amid an unprecedented national security emergency.
That makes Friday’s order the third nationwide FAA ground stop in 25 years — and the first caused by a communications failure affecting air traffic control facilities on such a scale.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the outage affected the regional air traffic control centres that direct planes between airports across the United States.
FAA technicians were deployed to investigate the problem and restore normal operations.
No indication of attack
US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no immediate evidence that the outage was a malicious attack or a threat to the United States.
He said the immediate priority was ensuring that aircraft already in the air could land safely before authorities resumed normal operations.
The clarification is important because of inevitable comparisons with the September 11 attacks. While both events resulted in a nationwide halt to departures, Friday’s disruption was triggered by a telecommunications failure rather than a confirmed security threat.
A ground stop is one of the FAA’s strongest traffic-management tools. It prevents aircraft from taking off when controllers cannot safely manage the number of planes entering the national airspace system.
The move can quickly trigger a chain reaction, with aircraft held at gates, passengers delayed or returned to terminals, crews running out of duty time and airlines struggling to reposition planes.
Fresh questions over US aviation systems
The outage also raises new questions about the resilience of America’s air traffic control network.
A September report by the US Government Accountability Office warned that the FAA still faced major challenges in replacing ageing air traffic control technology.
The watchdog said the agency had replaced 2,560 of 5,170 old and frail copper wires with fibre-optic cables as of May 2026.
There is no official confirmation that ageing equipment caused Friday’s communications failure.
However, the nationwide scale of the disruption is likely to intensify pressure on the FAA to explain the cause and demonstrate how similar outages can be prevented.
