FAA Issues Nationwide Ground Stop Across All U.S. Airports

Update – 5:15 p.m. EST

As of 5:15 p.m. EST, all U.S. departures remain halted “until further notice” while FAA technicians investigate what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed is a communications issue impacting all U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers. No timeline has been given for when the order will be rescinded, and roughly 7,000 flights have already been delayed or canceled nationwide, according to FlightAware.

“The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them,” Duffy said on social media.

Original Article

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday afternoon issued an extremely rare nationwide ground stop halting all departing flights across the United States.

In an advisory issued by the agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center at 3:54 p.m. EST, the FAA ordered that all departing traffic remain on the ground until further notice, while saying that inbound international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis.

The advisory listed an active window stretching into early Saturday morning, though the agency did not provide a timeline for when normal departures might resume.

In a brief statement accompanying the order, the FAA said the sweeping halt was enacted “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”.

While the agency has not officially detailed the root cause of the disruption, multiple news outlets, including CNN, reported that the grounding followed air traffic control frequency outages affecting parts of the country. The reason behind those outages hasn’t yet been confirmed.

As of 4:30 p.m. EST, according to FlightAware, more than 21,000 flights have been delayed and another 900+ cancelled globally, including 6,575 delays and 323 cancellations tied directly to U.S. air traffic.

The nationwide halt, an exceptionally rare event, comes during a peak Friday afternoon travel window, setting up widespread ripple effects across domestic airline networks heading into the weekend.

Travel advisors with clients scheduled to depart U.S. airports on Friday evening or Saturday morning should monitor carrier waivers and flight status updates closely as airlines begin rebooking displaced passengers.

The last nationwide ground stop came in January 2023 after an overnight failure of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) pilot-alerting system. The only other one, aside from that one and today’s, came on 9/11 when FAA issued the first nationwide ground stop in U.S. history, halting all civilian departures before escalating to a complete airspace closure that ordered all 4,500+ airborne flights to land immediately.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.