FAA Halts US Takeoffs Nationwide After Telecom Outage

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide halt to takeoffs on Friday after a communications failure hit air traffic operations, according to The Verge. Aircraft already flying were still permitted to land, but departures from airports across the United States largely came to a stop.

In a post shortly after 5PM ET, the agency said a temporary telecommunications outage had led it to pause all flights as a precaution. It added that every flight had been accounted for and that international services would be assessed individually.

Flight tracking service FlightAware counted 10,494 delayed US flights and 3,396 cancellations as of 6:16PM ET.

Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security Secretary, briefed the press at the White House on Friday afternoon. He said nothing so far points to a cyberattack, another national security threat, or any link to the recent Microsoft Outlook disruption. He also said investigators have not excluded any possible cause of the telecom failure.

Asked whether the cloud-based AI system known as Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories might be involved, Mullin said officials were examining that question. Air Space Intelligence, the company behind SMART, rejected any tie to the stoppage in a post on X. The firm, which won a 12-year contract worth $875 million in June to roll the system out, said the ground stop did not stem from SMART, any of its products, or its work with the FAA and air traffic control. The system went live across the country on November 10.

Reporting by Jon Ostrower of The Air Current traces the trouble to the Chicago control center first, with facilities in Boston, Washington, New York and Minneapolis following. He said radar and radio channels that controllers and pilots rely on are both affected, and that more sites reported issues once the agency stopped eastbound traffic. A Friday report on CNN, citing a person it did not name, said the FAA had not yet established what was happening.

CNN reported that a nationwide ground stop in 2023, triggered when the NOTAM system for pilots failed, ran for roughly 90 minutes. Before that, the previous one followed the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Mullin said departures abroad are being reviewed individually, while NBC News and the New York Times reported that some Europe and Asia bound flights left from Boston and New York.