The FAA halted every departing flight in the country for more than four hours after the phone and data links its air traffic controllers rely on failed, a breakdown officials blamed on old equipment.
Story Highlights
- The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 p.m. Eastern and lifted it at 8:15 p.m.
- About 3,500 planes were in the air when the stop began, and controllers brought them down under standard procedures.
- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed old equipment that got “overloaded with data.”
- Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said nothing pointed to a cyberattack.
- Thousands of flights were canceled, stranding travelers coast to coast.
FAA Orders Nationwide Pause, Then Resumes Departures
On Friday, November 13, shortly after 3:30 p.m. Eastern, FAA facilities began losing steady radar and communications links. At 3:54 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop, which keeps planes from taking off, “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” The agency later said the trouble came from “a temporary telecommunications outage” that hit multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the regional hubs that guide planes between airports.
Duffy said the FAA lifted the stop at 8:15 p.m. Eastern, about four hours and 20 minutes later, “after restoring full functionality at our air traffic control centers and TRACONs.” TRACONs are the radar facilities that guide planes near busy airports. Medical flights, life-saving cargo and law enforcement flights were allowed to keep flying, and the FAA said every flight was accounted for. Only one other nationwide ground stop has happened since the September 11 attacks: in 2023, when an FAA system that sends safety notices to pilots went down.
What Broke: Old Equipment, Officials Say
At a White House briefing Friday night, Duffy blamed an “incredibly old air traffic control system” that runs on “analog telecom.” “Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data,” he said. Switches and routers are the boxes that pass data and voice signals between FAA facilities. Duffy said officials were still working through the details of what went wrong.
Duffy said a new AI-based system being rolled out at FAA facilities, called SMART, played no part, calling the failure one of “old legacy equipment.” The company behind SMART also said the ground stop did not result from its system. Mullin said nothing so far pointed to a cyberattack, though the government was not ruling anything out, and he said the stop had no link to a Microsoft outage on Thursday. “No cyberattack, we’re still working through that process,” Mullin said. He added that the public “was never at danger.”
How Travelers Felt It
Thousands of flights were canceled, and travelers were stranded at airports across the country. Duffy said normal operations would take time to return and told travelers to check with their airlines. “This is one of those scenarios where this is not the fault of the airline,” he said. Duffy said he expected the system to be “back up and operational” heading into Thanksgiving travel.
A Push To Replace Old Gear
Duffy called the situation an “emergency” and pressed Congress for “billions more” to pay for a “complete overhaul” of air traffic control equipment. He warned, “You will have more of these,” unless Congress acts. Reporters asked him why the money had not been secured with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.
Democrats in Congress demanded answers. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called it an “unprecedented breakdown.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate aviation subcommittee, said the system’s safety “is built on redundancies” and that she would press the FAA for answers. Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, said the committee will review how planes communicate through main and backup radio channels. Government auditors have warned for years that the FAA needs urgent action to modernize its aging air traffic systems, a warning sharpened by the 2023 outage.
Sources:
transportation.gov, abcnews.com, nbcnews.com, apnews.com, jsonline.com, nbcchicago.com, gao.gov
