FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop After Four Hours as Officials Blame Overloaded Systems

The ground stop was the first across the US since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and only the second since the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Its timing made it costly. According to aviation data company Cirium, about 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart US airports after 4pm on Friday.

Trump administration officials blamed the failure on outdated equipment that could not cope with the load placed on it. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a White House news conference that ageing air traffic control technology and routers overwhelmed by data were behind the outage. He said the FAA, not the airlines, was responsible, and urged Congress to provide more money to modernise the system, warning that similar shutdowns could happen again without substantial investment. Earlier in the day Duffy had said the problem affected all 22 regional centres that handle aircraft flying between airports.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system had overwhelmed it. Asked whether he could rule out a cyberattack or a rogue artificial intelligence incident, he said: "There's nothing completely certain right now. It doesn't appear that way." He said there were no signs of an attack and that the failure appeared to be "mechanically driven", but that the investigation was continuing.

Mullin said investigators would examine whether there was any link to the FAA's nationwide rollout of a new AI system designed to identify problems and reroute aircraft. That system runs from a single location near Washington, DC, and only sends recommendations to the control centres, he said.

Diversions and Cancellations

Cirium counted at least 827 diverted flights as of 7.05pm Eastern Time. Of those, 670 returned to the airports they had left and 157 landed elsewhere, with Washington Dulles, Los Angeles, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky and Nashville among the airports taking diverted aircraft. Planes already in the air were allowed to land, and some international flights were cleared to depart on a case-by-case basis before the restrictions were lifted.

Airlines said lifting the order would not bring an immediate return to normal schedules, because many aircraft and crews ended the day in the wrong places. JetBlue cancelled its remaining Friday evening flights, except Europe-bound services from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Boston, and said it expected further cancellations on Saturday. FedEx said it was ready to activate contingency plans for its cargo network. US airlines carry about 61,000 tons of goods a day to and from more than 220 countries, according to industry group Airlines for America.

Duffy said he was confident operations would be back to normal before the Thanksgiving travel period, while acknowledging that rebuilding capacity and rebooking passengers would take time.

The Money Question

The outage lands in the middle of a funding fight over the air traffic control system. Congress approved $12.5 billion last year for a modernisation programme that has replaced miles of copper wiring with fibre-optic lines and is gradually swapping out old radio equipment. On Friday the FAA and the White House asked for a further $30.1 billion to cover remaining infrastructure needs.

For travellers between the Gulf and the US, the effect was not immediately clear. Neither Emirates nor Etihad confirmed cancellations or delays tied to the halt, and passengers were advised to check flight status with their airline before travelling to the airport.