FAA Ends Nationwide Ground Stop; Flights Resume After Technical Glitches

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted a nationwide ground stop that halted departing flights on Friday, citing extraordinary circumstances and safety concerns.

This was the third nationwide ground stop since the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to officials. “Everybody’s safe,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, adding that the event was not “another 9/11”.

What happened?

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 p.m. Eastern Time (20:54 GMT) on Friday after a telecommunications outage affected air‑route traffic‑control centres that handle inter‑regional flights. The restriction was lifted that evening.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET (01:15 GMT on Saturday), after more than four hours of disruption. “We’ve opened up the airspace,” Duffy said, cautioning that departures would resume gradually. “It’s going to be slow,” he added, urging passengers to check with their airlines.

Flights were scheduled to resume as pilots and flight attendants became available, with authorities aiming to move as many aircraft as possible during the evening. Aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that, after 4 p.m. ET, roughly 11,000 flights carrying over 1.5 million passengers were still scheduled to depart. By 7:05 p.m. ET, at least 827 flights had been diverted—670 returned to their origin airports and 157 were redirected elsewhere. Aircraft already airborne were permitted to continue to their destinations.

International flights were handled on a case‑by‑case basis, with some permitted to depart despite the grounding.

How many flights were affected?

More than 4,700 flights were cancelled and 10,000 delayed on Friday, while another 700 had already been cancelled for Saturday, according to FlightRadar24. Aviation analysts said it could take days for airlines to restore normal schedules.

Reporting from Los Angeles International Airport, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren spoke with passenger Nicholas Erdodi, who had travelled 16‑18 hours from New Zealand and was trying to reach Chicago for a conference. Mr Erdodi described spending an additional six hours at the airport after being forced to leave his plane.

“The challenge is you cannot ask anyone here what to do,” he said. “Lack of information is what bothers me… find the hotel for the night, not to mention all the cost.” He was rebooked but remained uncertain about the next flight’s departure.

What does a nationwide ground stop mean?

A nationwide ground stop temporarily requires departing aircraft to remain on the ground until cleared for takeoff. Flights already in the air may continue to their destinations, but no new departures are permitted until the safety issue is resolved.

What caused the FAA nationwide ground stop?

The FAA attributed the grounding to a telecommunications outage that impaired air‑traffic‑control systems. Transportation Secretary Duffy said the outage stemmed from overloaded switches and routers that went down, though there was no total loss of communications or radar capability.

Aviation safety expert Todd Curtis of AirSafe.com noted that the failures appeared concentrated in the country’s 21 air‑route traffic‑control centres (one in Alaska, 20 in the lower 48). He emphasised that controllers rely on multiple handoffs, and redundancy is critical.

Before further details were released, Ron Bartsch, a professor of international aviation law, raised concerns about the apparent failure of backup systems. “The whole aviation community is based on redundancy,” he said. “So the fact that a redundant system hasn’t kicked in immediately just raises more questions than we’ve seen answers to at this stage.”

Homeland Security Secretary Mullin confirmed that there was no cyberattack linked to the grounding and that the public was never in danger. Secretary Duffy called for $50 billion in upgrades to the nation’s air‑traffic‑control infrastructure, acknowledging that tens of thousands of travellers had been stranded.

When will US flights return to normal?

Duffy said it would “take us some time to get back to capacity” but expected operations to be “back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel during Thanksgiving.” The Thanksgiving travel period begins in less than two weeks and is typically one of the busiest times for US air travel.

Expert Curtis warned that even after the technical problems are resolved, disruption could continue. “If it’s fully resolved, it would take more than a day to get back to normal, to reschedule aircraft,” he said. He explained that many airlines operate interconnected networks, meaning passengers often change planes at major hubs, which could cause additional hassles for carriers as they try to re‑route stranded travelers.

Passengers have been advised to check flight status directly with their airlines, as delays and cancellations may persist.

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