The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all US flights Friday afternoon, due to “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” the agency said in a statement. Flights already in the air will be allowed to land, the agency said, but no new ones are permitted to take off.
In a post on X, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the ground stop was related to a communication issue affecting Air Traffic Control Centers, and said that agency technicians are investigating.
The FAA has not provided any additional details, and the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nationwide ground stops are rare. The FAA halted all air traffic on September 11, 2001. In January of 2023, a ground stop was issued after an outage to a critical system that the FAA used to distribute real-time data and warnings to pilots, known as NOTAM (Notice to Air Mission).
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
