UPDATED 5:45 PM PAC TIME
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its nationwide ground stop at about 5:15 p.m. Pacific time Friday, more than four hours after it halted departures at every airport in the country. Domestic flights are being allowed to take off again. Officials warned it will take many hours for operations to return to normal.
What Caused It
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of anything “nefarious” behind the failure. “It’s just a telecommunications outage,” he said. Mullin also said the outage was not linked to this week’s global Microsoft outage.
Officials and news reports are now giving more detail on what broke:
An update to the private communications network that connects the nation’s air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage, multiple sources told CBS News.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stop was ordered in response to instability in radar and communications at control centers across the country. According to Flightradar24, Duffy said switches and routers became overloaded and shut down after they began providing inconsistent data.
Duffy said more than 3,500 planes were in the air when the ground stop was issued. All were accounted for.
The FAA has not released a formal finding on the cause.
Flights Canceled And Delayed
More than 5,000 flights were canceled across the U.S. Friday, and the number is expected to grow, according to flight tracking firms FlightAware and Cirium. Just under 10,000 flights were delayed.
United Airlines said it would cancel most of its remaining flights for the night, except for some international flights. JetBlue canceled all remaining Friday flights except Europe-bound departures from New York and Boston. Air Canada canceled all remaining flights between Canada and the U.S. for the day. Major airlines are offering travel waivers so passengers can change plans.
Cargo was hit too. “We are prepared to activate contingency plans to minimize service disruptions and will resume normal flight operations as soon as the FAA permits,” FedEx spokesperson Shannon Davis said.
Southern California Situation
Some flights were allowed to leave Southern California during the stop. Several international flights took off from LAX shortly before 4 p.m. Ontario International Airport said flights heading west over the ocean were allowed to depart. Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines said flights from the West Coast to Hawaii could continue.
Domestic departures from LAX, Hollywood Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario and John Wayne are now resuming. Expect long delays and canceled flights tonight and into Saturday while airlines get planes and crews back into position.
What Travelers Can Do Now
Check your airline’s app or website before heading to the airport. Many flights tonight have already been canceled.
Ask your airline about its travel waiver if you want to change or cancel a trip without a fee.
Expect crowded terminals and long rebooking lines at LAX and Burbank tonight and Saturday.
Earlier Friday
The FAA ordered the nationwide ground stop at 12:54 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, Nov. 13. It is only the third time in modern history that every airport in the country has been shut to departures at once. The other two were the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and a January 2023 computer failure.
The FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center sent the order to every aircraft operator in the country: “Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. Attention all aircraft operators, by order of the Federal Aviation Command Center all airports are ground stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”
Duffy posted on X at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific that the stop followed “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” Those are the FAA’s 22 regional centers that guide planes at cruising altitude between airports. The FAA later said, “There has been a temporary telecommunications outage — out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for.”
Trouble first appeared at about 12:30 p.m. Pacific, when the Kansas City center went into a ground stop for intermittent equipment outages. The problem spread to other centers in quick succession. Chicago O’Hare and Chicago Midway were grounded next, and minutes later the FAA expanded the order to the entire country.
Planes over Southern California at cruising altitude are handled by the FAA’s Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, one of the centers affected. Hollywood Burbank Airport, the closest commercial airport for South Pasadena, Pasadena and Glendale, is jointly owned by the three cities through the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority.
“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a nationwide ground stop affecting flights departing from LAX,” Los Angeles International Airport said in a statement during the stop. “Please anticipate delays and contact your airline for flight status.”
Hollywood Burbank Airport received notice of the ground stop just before 1 p.m., airport spokesperson Mike Christensen told The Desert Sun. “Right now, there’s going to be delays, but then even this afternoon … things can get backed up,” he said. A gate agent at Burbank told NBC4 that all planes en route to Burbank had landed. Long Beach Airport and John Wayne Airport issued advisories telling passengers to check with their airlines.
How This Compares
In January 2023, a corrupted file in the FAA’s pilot notice system, called NOTAM, stopped departures nationwide for about two hours on a Wednesday morning. Before that, the only nationwide shutdown was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Friday’s stop lasted roughly twice as long and hit at the start of the Friday evening rush. It involved the communications network used to manage planes in flight, not a computer database.
