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FAA halts departures at all US airports over air traffic control communication problem

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says FAA technicians are investigating, and FlightAware counts thousands of delayed flights across the country.

The Federal Aviation Administration headquarters in Washington
The Federal Aviation Administration headquarters in Washington. Photo: Runner1928, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
37 news outlets reported this
Liberal11 outletsA rare stop, seen through pilots and controllersCenter13 outletsAn unexplained stop, with the cause still unknownConservative13 outletsNationwide stop, with reports of radio outage
ABRAnews EditorialPublished 1 min readMoney and daily life
Overview

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday, Nov. 13, halting departures at all U.S. airports. Its notice cited "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety" and said departing traffic should stay grounded until further notice. Inbound international flights are being handled case by case.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X that a communication issue is affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which direct planes in flight between airports. There are 22 of them. He said FAA technicians are investigating.

UPI reports the FAA did not immediately identify the cause. Earlier that afternoon, the FAA had stopped flights at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports because of an equipment outage. FlightAware counted thousands of delayed flights and hundreds of cancellations, according to Yahoo News and UPI.

Yahoo reports that a pilot on a United flight told passengers, including its reporter, that they had been told the stop would last until 11 p.m. Eastern at that time. Several outlets report that only one earlier nationwide stop has happened since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That one came in January 2023, when a system that notifies pilots failed.

Key figures
  • 22Air Route Traffic Control Centers in the USABC News
  • over 7,800flights delayed as of 4:50 p.m. ET, per FlightAware via YahooYahoo News
  • over 350flights canceled as of 4:50 p.m. ET, per FlightAware via YahooYahoo News
  • At least 21,504flights delayed as of Friday afternoon, per FlightAware via UPIUPI
  • 923flights canceled as of Friday afternoon, per FlightAware via UPIUPI

Three sides of the story

11Liberal13Center13Conservative

37 news outlets reported this

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Liberal11 outlets

A rare stop, seen through pilots and controllers

ABC News leads with the rarity of the order and quotes Duffy's X post that technicians are investigating. It adds ABC contributor John Nance, who says pilots in the air know what to do. Yahoo News cites FlightAware for over 7,800 delayed flights and relays a pilot's account that the outage began at Kansas City Center and spread.

The Los Angeles Times builds on air traffic audio, including a San Diego pilot answering the announcement with "That's a joke, right?" It also reports a Chicago controller saying they lost all frequencies. It reports guesses on the channel about a link to a Microsoft Outlook outage, a cause the controller said he could not confirm.

MS NOW quotes the FAA alert and says two people at the FAA confirmed it is only the second such stop since 9/11. The Boston Globe runs the AP wire report, which adds the $12.5 billion approved for modernization and Duffy's statement that another $30 billion is needed.

Center13 outlets

An unexplained stop, with the cause still unknown

UPI leads with the order and says the FAA did not immediately identify the cause. It cites FlightAware for at least 21,504 delayed and 923 canceled flights. It also recalls that the 2023 stop followed private contractors inadvertently deleting files.

Newsweek carries the FAA's statement that its information is preliminary and quotes Marc Nichols, former FAA chief counsel under former President Joe Biden, who says "we should not speculate as to the cause." It adds airport notices from Dulles and Atlanta and a National Weather Service radar outage. Deseret News runs the AP wire report with the $12.5 billion modernization background and a Salt Lake City airport statement.

Deutsche Welle gives a short account citing Duffy's X post. The Las Vegas Review-Journal says the government gave no details about the reason.

Conservative13 outlets

Nationwide stop, with reports of radio outage

The Daily Caller leads with the order, citing ATCSCC Advisory 111 and an FAA spokesperson's statement to the outlet, then Duffy's post. RedState opens with "It never rains but it pours" and reports a Washington Examiner FAA source calling the stop "absolutely unheard of." It says controllers in Chicago, New York and Boston reportedly lost radio frequencies around 3:15 p.m. Eastern.

Townhall quotes the advisory and the Examiner's report of a possible "frequency outage." It adds an FAA employee saying planes in the air are being rerouted to the nearest working center. The Post Millennial calls it the third nationwide stop ever and notes the FAA days earlier announced wider use of its $875 million SMART system.

The Blaze times Duffy's post at 4:16 p.m. and recalls the January 2023 stop, which delayed 4,600 flights.

Money and daily life

For travelers, Newsweek says the stop is likely to cause heavy delays affecting thousands of people into the weekend. Dulles and Atlanta airports told passengers to check with their airlines about their flights. United Airlines said air traffic control is limiting how many planes can land and depart each hour in Los Angeles, per Yahoo News.

All sources: 49 articles from 37 outlets

Liberal (16)

Center (16)

Conservative (17)

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