The US Federal Aviation Administration has lifted its nationwide ground stop at approximately 8:15 p.m. EST.
On Friday (November 13), the FAA issued the ground stop from all airports at about 4:00 p.m. EST, saying flights were ordered not to take off “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Why did the FAA issue a nationwide ground stop?
Technicians have reportedly been able to stabilize the telecommunications network outage that was impacting the air traffic control centers.
“At 8:15 tonight, Eastern time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a news briefing Friday night, per CBS News. “Now does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It’s going to be slow. So if you’re watching, you’re at an airport, check with your airline.”
The ground stop became the longest nationwide ground stop since the September 11, 2001 attacks, though there was also a ground stop in January 2023 that lasted about 90 minutes.
How many flights were canceled or delayed?
Due to the ground stop, more than 4,700 flights were canceled and 10,000 delayed, while another 700 were canceled for Saturday, according to the Reuters report. It could take several days for things to get back to normal as airlines are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.
What do officials know about the communications outage?
The stoppage has been attributed to a telecommunications outage, with Duffy blaming the old air traffic control technology and overloaded routers, per CNN. He has called for $50 billion in upgrades to the air traffic control system.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said this didn’t stem from a threat to the U.S. and wasn’t related to the Microsoft outage, citing “zero evidence” for a cyber attack.
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