The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop late Friday after communication problems affected multiple air traffic control centers, but the disruption continued into Saturday as airlines worked to restore their schedules.
More than 2,500 flights were canceled in the United States on Saturday, with hundreds more delayed, The Associated Press reported.
The FAA’s statement said the order followed communication issues at several Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The U.S. Department of Transportation said in its official update that intermittent telecommunications outages affected the stability of communications and radar systems used by air traffic controllers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said older analog telecom links and legacy switches and routers became overloaded with data, creating inconsistent information. He said newer IP switches remained online.
The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, but Duffy said flights would resume gradually as airlines checked whether aircraft and crews were available. The order kept departing aircraft on the ground at airports nationwide, while inbound international flights were handled on a case-by-case basis, according to TechCrunch’s report on the FAA alert.
Duffy also said the outage was not connected to the FAA’s new SMART tool, an AI-assisted system that provides prompts to human controllers. The department said the tool is separate from the legacy equipment involved in the failure. The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023, when an FAA system used to distribute flight-safety notices failed, The Associated Press reported.
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