US Airspace Reopens After Four-Hour FAA Ground Stop
US airspace reopens after a nationwide ground stop that kept every flight on the ground for around four hours on Saturday, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers and cancelling more than 6,600 flights. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the stop after officials traced the failure to a communications outage in ageing air traffic control equipment.
The stop left passengers stuck at airports across the country, with some pulled off planes moments before departure. It was only the second time such an alert had been issued in US airspace since the September 11 attacks.
President Donald Trump’s administration said there was no evidence of foul play. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a press conference that officials had seen no sign of a cyber attack, and he ruled out any link with the outage that hit Microsoft systems earlier in the week.
US airspace reopens: what caused the outage
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy blamed equipment that has served far beyond its time. “This is a legacy system problem,” he said. “We have old, old switches, old routers. We use 1980s little copper lines. It’s an old system that went down, and went down everywhere. It got overloaded.”
Duffy had asked Congress on Thursday for $30.1 billion to upgrade the US air traffic control system. As the stop was lifted, he repeated the plea. “I’m going to say it a million times: the Congress has to give the resources to the president so he can finish this bill,” he said.
Dawn reported that the outage came from a major communications failure caused by decades-old technology. The system went down across the country at once, which is why the stop covered the whole of US airspace.
More than 6,600 flights cancelled
More than 6,600 flights were cancelled and 8,600 delayed, according to FlightRadar24, with another 1,500 already cancelled for Sunday. Recovery was expected to take some time, with planes waiting on taxiways and gates full at airports around the country.
Passengers crowded concourses as they tried to find out when they might travel. At New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Tiara Johnson was trying to reach Orlando for a concert with a friend. “They just keep delaying it. So it started out at 7:55. Then it went to 8:30, 9:30. Now it’s at 10:30. So we don’t know when it’s gonna leave,” she told AFP.
Joseph Anderson, 72, was trying to fly from Las Vegas to Oakland. “We’re trying to debate whether or not we need to reschedule or drive or what, but if the whole country is stopped, that means the highways are going to be jammed too,” he said.
Stranded passengers looked for other ways to travel, and long lines formed at rental car counters in Las Vegas. Susan Sardina had already boarded her flight back to Orange County when staff told passengers to get off.
A rare shutdown, and an old system
A nationwide ground stop is highly unusual. There was one such stop in January 2023, when a pilot notification system failed, but the only other national stop happened after the September 11 attacks, when no aircraft flew for days.
US airspace is among the busiest in the world, and it is ramping up to its busiest period as the Thanksgiving holiday moves into view. That timing made the disruption worse.
The episode has put American air traffic control back in the public eye. The system still runs on copper lines and switches from the 1980s, and Duffy’s $30.1 billion request shows the scale of the upgrade the administration says is needed. Some travellers said they had been told their flight was delayed because of wind, while departure boards kept showing flights leaving as normal.
Feature Pakistan covered the stop as it happened in our report on the FAA nationwide ground stop. The Microsoft outage earlier in the week was a separate incident. Turkiye and Qatar also signed a defence agreement this week, and the climate talks in Antalya have seen a fight over climate science at COP31.
Frequently asked questions
How long did the US ground stop last?
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop after around four hours on Saturday.
How many flights were cancelled?
More than 6,600 flights were cancelled and 8,600 delayed, according to FlightRadar24.
What caused the outage?
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy blamed a communications failure in ageing equipment, saying the system uses 1980s copper lines, old switches and old routers.
Was it a cyber attack?
No. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had seen zero evidence of a cyber attack or an AI attack, and he ruled out any link with the Microsoft outage.
Has this happened before?
It was only the second nationwide ground stop since the September 11 attacks. The first came in January 2023, when a pilot notification system failed.
