The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” According to the agency’s statement, aircraft already airborne would be cleared to continue to their destinations, while no further departures would be authorized until the restriction was lifted.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, writing on X, attributed the ground stop to a communications problem affecting Air Traffic Control Centers across the country.
The order followed a wave of reports describing radio frequency outages at several of the country’s busiest and most critical control facilities, among them centers serving Boston, Chicago, and New York.
The FAA offered no further explanation and had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Nationwide ground stops are highly unusual. The FAA has previously halted all air traffic on only a handful of occasions, most notably on September 11, 2001. In January 2023, the agency issued a similar order after an outage disabled NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions), the system used to deliver real-time data and safety warnings to pilots.
At San Francisco International Airport, crowds of stranded and bewildered passengers formed long lines at airline counters. Several flights had already been pushed back by high winds earlier in the day, and the FAA’s order only deepened the delays.
“The FAA has issued a nationwide ground stop,” a United Airlines employee announced over the public address system at Terminal 3, near the E gates. “This is a nationwide event.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.