‘Extraordinary circumstances’: Flights grounded across US due to communications issues
Follow along for our live coverage of the US aviation emergency here.
Washington: A ground stop has been issued for all flights across the United States due to “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety” after authorities reported serious air traffic control communications issues.
The order means flights in the air may land, but those on the ground cannot take off. FlightRadar data showed that planes were still landing.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the nationwide ground stop “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centres”.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” he said. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”
The ground stop was issued on Friday afternoon in Washington (about 8.15am Saturday AEDT). The cause of the system failure was not immediately clear.
Urging calm, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House the ground stop was ordered out of an abundance of caution, and there was no suggestion at this stage that a cyberattack was to blame.
“There is no indication, and we had no reason to believe as of right now, that this was a threat to the United States,” he said. “This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA.”
But Mullin also said nothing could be ruled out at this point. He said he saw no reason to connect Friday’s telecommunications issue with the outage that affected Microsoft systems around the world the previous day.
“We are assured that everybody is safe. Everybody that is in the air ... we’re going to get you on the ground. There’s no reason for the public to be afraid or scared for their loved ones. This isn’t another 9/11.”
CNN also reported that two law enforcement officials said preliminary information indicated a cyberattack was not to blame. The FAA has been contacted for further comment.
It is only the third time in US history that a nationwide ground stop has been ordered; the first was during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the other was in 2023 when the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system failed.
The 2023 outage lasted about 12 hours in total, though departures were able to resume after about 90 minutes.
Friday’s ground stop will impact thousands of flights and hundreds of thousands of passengers: US airspace handles around 45,000 flights a day.
Dennis Lennox, a Republican strategist, was on board a plane on the tarmac at MBS International Airport in Michigan when the ground stop was ordered. He was due to fly to Detroit and onwards to Los Angeles.
“We had backed out of the gate and were starting to go through the taxiing process to take off, and we were ordered to return to the gate,” he said.
“The initial report was there were radio issues in this area. Within a minute or two, I was able to find out things quicker. We weren’t even given the chance to stay on the plane. We were kicked off the plane and dumped inside the terminal.”
Last year, US Congress approved $US12.5 billion ($18.5 billion) to fix the FAA’s ageing communications system, and on Friday the FAA and White House asked Congress for another $US30.1 billion to address other issues.
The FAA has also begun rolling out an artificial intelligence tool called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) to help manage air traffic across the country.
Asked whether Friday’s issues could be AI related, Mullin reminded a reporter that the Trump administration now calls it “SI” or superintelligence.
Former FAA deputy administrator Daniel Elwell told Fox News the ground stop was a sensible measure to “declutter the airspace” and deal with the technical issue.
“The ground stop, while a real pain in the neck, is the safest way to go,” he said.
United Airlines, one of the main carriers between the US and Australia, said in a post on X that international departures were being managed on a case-by-case basis by the FAA.
The airline operates a number of flights from the US to Australia’s east coast that are due to depart late on Friday night (Los Angeles time).
By about 10.30am (AEDT), some international flights had begun departing the US from hubs such as Los Angeles and Washington Dulles, FlightRadar data showed.
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