Thousands of flights to and from the United States were suspended for several hours on Friday due to a ground stop order issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
An alert put out by the agency just before 4 p.m. said the ground stop was necessary due to “extraordinary circumstances” and “reasons of safety.”
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later confirmed the disruption in a social media post which he attributed to “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
Most U.S. airports reported ground stops, but a few, including in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Las Vegas closed entirely until the mid-evening. Flights that were already airborne were permitted to continue to their destinations, but in some cases were diverted to other cities.
The FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop order just before 8:45 p.m. allowing flights and airports to resume regular operations.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin addressed reporters from the White House Briefing Room late Friday evening and said there was no indication yet that “this was a nefarious attack.”
“It’s just a telecommunications outage,” he explained.
“There was never any lives at risk,” Mullin added. “There was no flights at risk. FAA was able to handle it. We did it out of an abundance of caution.”
The homeland security secretary sought to downplay conspiracy theories about what caused the outage.
“I do understand the internet traffic, and where all these conspiracies are running towards,” he said, adding that there was no link to the worldwide Microsoft outage that happened a day earlier.
Mullin attributed the outage to new technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system which he said overloaded antiquated systems and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps.
Travellers in Canada felt the impact
Four major Canadian airports, including the Toronto Pearson International Airport and the Montreal Trudeau International Airport, suspended flights to and from the United States.
NAV Canada, which operates Canada’s civil air navigation system, said it implemented traffic management measures at Toronto Pearson, Montréal-Trudeau, Calgary and Vancouver to safely manage traffic volumes.
Officials with Air Canada said flights to and from the Caribbean and South America were also impacted.
Canada’s Transportation Minister Steven MacKinnon said earlier in the evening that Ottawa had offered its full assistance to the U.S. FAA as it managed the situation, including the accommodation of U.S.-bound aircraft.
MacKinnon said Canada remained ready to support its American colleagues.
This was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The U.S. government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year. Miles of old copper wires have been replaced with fiber optic lines and old radio systems are gradually being replaced at airports across the country.
But much work remains. Government officials said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it.
The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said, except this time on a nationwide scale.
With files from Josh Funk, the Associated Press.
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