FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop After Four-Hour Outage
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15pm ET on Friday, November 13, after a communications outage hit all 22 air route traffic control centres. More than 10,000 flights were delayed and over 4,000 cancelled, according to FlightAware. The cause is unconfirmed.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15pm Eastern time on Friday, November 13, after a communications outage halted departing flights across the United States for more than four hours. Here is what to know about air traffic communications, and what officials have and have not confirmed.
The FAA issued the order at 3:54pm Eastern. It cited "extraordinary circumstances and reasons of safety" and later described a "temporary telecommunications outage."
Scale of the disruption
More than 10,000 flights were delayed and over 4,000 cancelled, according to the tracking site FlightAware. Flightradar24 counted 4,042 flights in the air, heading to US airports, when the order came.
The problem affected all 22 air route traffic control centres, which guide aircraft across the country. The FAA also asked Eurocontrol, its European counterpart, to suspend flights to the US from its 42 member states. International flights were handled case by case.
Some US-bound flights from Australia were delayed, ABC News understands. Airlines now face the job of getting aircraft and crews back into position.
What officials say caused it
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin first called it "just a telecommunications outage as of right now." He said the cause was not yet confirmed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed ageing equipment. "We have analogue telecoms, our routers actually got overloaded with data," he said, adding that inconsistencies in the data led officials to shut the system down.
Shawn Pruchnik, an associate professor in Ohio State University's aviation department, said grounding departures was the right precaution. "Keep everyone down, let everyone land," he said.
Cyberattack and AI questions
Mullin said there was no indication of an attack. "There's no chatter. We haven't seen any footprints," he said, adding that the failure appeared to be "mechanically driven." An official familiar with the matter said the FBI does not believe a cyberattack or criminal activity was behind it, and that investigators were examining whether a software update played a role.
Mullin said officials had not ruled out a link to the FAA's planned rollout of an artificial intelligence tool for air traffic management. Air Space Intelligence, the company behind the SMART system, said the ground stop was not a result of its products. The FAA awarded the firm an $875m contract in June and announced an expansion of the system on November 10.
Microsoft said it has no indication the ground stop is related to its services. Its own global outage lasted 21 hours and was resolved earlier on Friday.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth called for a "thorough and complete investigation." As ranking member of the Aviation Subcommittee, she said she will demand answers from the FAA.
