Trump administration officials said Friday that new technologies added to the nation’s air traffic control system were overloading outdated systems and causing “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the longest domestic shutdown in 25 years.
It was lifted Friday evening after a five-hour period during which most flights were not allowed to take off from U.S. airports.
Thousands of flights and potentially more than a million travelers have been affected from coast to coast. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in danger since more than 3,000 flights had landed safely. But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he could not guarantee it would not happen again.
Mullin said the Federal Aviation Administration is installing “new equipment, new technology” and “overwhelming the old system.” There appears to be no indication of a cyberattack, Mullin said.
A limited number of domestic flights began taking off Friday evening after the ground shutdown was lifted, but it would likely take days for airlines to fully recover because many planes and crews were out of position. Officials said they believe the system will return to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.
The nationwide ground shutdown was the first since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and the second since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Video below: What to do if you have a flight this weekend?
Mullin says no signs of wrongdoing
Asked if he could rule out a cyberattack or malicious artificial intelligence incident, Mullin said: “There’s nothing entirely certain at the moment. It doesn’t appear to be the case.” He said there were no “prints” showing an attack and that it appeared to be “mechanically provoked,” adding that officials were still investigating the cause.
At least 827 flights were diverted. As of 7:05 p.m. EST, 670 flights were returned to the airport they originally took off from, while 157 were rerouted to another airport, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
Airports where many flights ended up being diverted included Washington Dulles International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and Nashville International Airport.
Some 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart from U.S. airports after 4 p.m. Eastern.
Video below: What are your options and rights after Friday’s FAA ground stop?
At the time of the ground stop, 3,500 planes were in the sky, Duffy said.
“And the last time I looked, we had less than 400 in the airspace,” he said. He said it would be slow to return air traffic to normal.
At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport Friday afternoon, travelers going through security learned about ground control when they looked at screens that showed flight delays across the board.
Some called friends or family, wondering whether to spend the night in Chicago or find another way to reach their destination.
Amber McQuilkin, 27, sat on a bench, disappointed to miss a trip with friends to New York for the League of Legends World Finals. Her friends, she said, had already arrived there.
“No information was relayed to me,” said the software engineer from Seattle, who took a week off for the trip. “I considered giving up flying and driving, but the more I thought about it, the more miserable I thought it would be.”
Austin Curtis and his wife were rethinking their trip from South Bend, Indiana, to a friend’s baby shower in Denver after being delayed during a layover in Chicago.
They had boarded a flight to Denver from O’Hare International Airport when they were told to get off the plane.
“We saw them removing luggage from our plane and others, so we’re assuming it’s going to be a pretty significant delay,” Curtis said.
They didn’t know whether to find a hotel room or continue to wait out the delay at the airport. With care already in place for their two young children at home, they could spend the weekend in Chicago, he said.
Stranded sports teams and delayed cargo flights
NBA, NHL and college teams found themselves stranded while trying to reach their destinations. Meanwhile, NFL teams were wondering if the problem would be resolved in time to get to their games this weekend.
Duffy said NCAA teams would be prioritized before Saturday’s football games.
“I would encourage those football teams to contact the FAA, plan their flight schedules and make sure they can travel” to kickoff, he said.
Cargo flights were also delayed by the ground stopover.
FedEx, the world’s largest cargo airline, said it was prepared to activate contingency plans to minimize any possible disruption.
U.S. airlines transport about 61,000 tons (55,340 metric tons) of goods – from letters to packages – to and from more than 220 countries daily, according to the trade group Airlines for America.
Despite the ground shutdown, SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from Texas Friday afternoon on its final test flight.
Past problems have also been linked to equipment failures
The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communications outage in September that disrupted hundreds of flights across the Northeast, although that disruption was linked to a construction crew cutting a fiber optic line. Aging equipment has also been blamed for brief radar outages last year that disrupted Newark Airport.
Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the difference this time is that it happened on a national scale, making it harder for controllers to communicate reliably with pilots.
“If you don’t have that capability, whether it’s because the old cables they have are just dilapidated or for whatever reason, you have to stop the planes on the ground and not get them in the air, where you might not be able to communicate with them anymore,” said Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot.
Friday’s ground stop also was different than after 9/11 because planes were not ordered to land immediately and pilots were likely able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.
Video below: What passengers can expect now that nationwide ground controls have been lifted
Weather radars not down, NWS says
National weather radars did not experience any outages Friday evening.
That’s according to the National Weather Service, which released a statement on social media debunking the rapidly evolving rumor.
“In case you are hearing otherwise, there is no radar outage and https://radar.weather.gov is fully operational!” »wrote NWS. “Outdated content from isolated web pages stating otherwise is circulating, but NWS radars are functioning normally.”
Are the Microsoft Outlook Outage and FAA Ground Shutdown Connected?
This global news comes just a day after a massive Microsoft outage left thousands of users without access to Outlook, the company’s email platform.
According to Downdetector, reports peaked at 130,000 affected users, although other estimates indicate the figure was closer to millions.
These two events, both stemming from seemingly complex technological issues, occurred so close to each other that many wonder if they are related.
However, Microsoft and the federal government have denied any connection.
Hours after ground control was implemented, Microsoft released a statement on social media.
“We have no indication that the FAA National Ground Stop is related to any Microsoft services,” the company wrote.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also rejected the link.
Answering questions Friday afternoon outside the White House, Mullin said they were “separate issues” and that he saw “no reason to connect those two.”
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Funk was reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP editors Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado; Ali Swenson in Chicago; and Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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