The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency order on Friday grounding all departing flights at airports across the United States until further notice, citing “exceptional circumstances and safety-related reasons”.
According to an official notice issued by the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Centre, the nationwide ground stop took effect at 2:54 pm Central Time (20:54 GMT).
The directive included the following measures:
Departing flights: All aircraft operators were instructed to keep scheduled departing flights on the ground at all US airports until further notice.
Inbound international flights: The FAA said international flights heading to the United States would be handled “on a case-by-case basis” to ensure they could land safely.
Further updates: Authorities stressed that the measure was primarily precautionary, adding that it could remain in place for several hours while they worked to ensure the systems were stable.
Although the FAA’s initial statement referred only to “exceptional circumstances” and “safety-related reasons”, without providing detailed technical information, US media reports and sources within the aviation industry said the disruption was caused by a series of technical failures affecting radio frequencies and communications systems used by air traffic control centres to monitor aircraft.
The nationwide disruption came just one day after technical problems affected the US Midwest, particularly the Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Centre. Earlier on Friday, reports of communications problems had also led to a temporary suspension of departures at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, before the measure was extended nationwide.
A nationwide grounding of flights across the United States is an extremely rare occurrence in the history of US civil aviation.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later announced that a “communications issue is affecting all air traffic control centres”, providing the first official confirmation of the nature of the disruption
