FAA's Nationwide Ground Stop Definitely Not Because Of New AI Air Traffic Control Tool... Probably
At 3:45 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop, halting all flights that were set to take off from U.S. airports until further notice. An ATCSCC advisory was posted by Flightradar24 on Bluesky, which reads: "Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. Attention all aircraft operators, by order of the Federal Aviation Command Center all airports are ground stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis." Some international flights have been allowed to take off, as well. The initial announcement stated the ground stop is scheduled to stay in effect until 11:00 p.m. ET, but it seems like it'll last longer than that. (Flightradar has an ongoing live blog here.)
In a Twitter post a short time later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, "The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them." According to News9 Oklahoma, reports from aviation monitoring account OSINTdefender said the FAA's ground stop is due to communication frequency issues affecting the National Airspace System. In a short post, the FAA said, "There has been a temporary telecommunications outage – out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis." As of 6:45 p.m., President Trump has yet to make any official statement.
In about as funny a turn of events as you could possibly imagine, our team found out about this situation from a social media post by Flavor Flav, who seems to be one of the first people to post about it. This is a developing story, and we'll update you as we learn more.
One of our writers is stuck because of it
A scan of the National Airspace System Status website shows major airports listed as "airport closure," "ground stop," "ground delay," or "departure delay." The last time the FAA enacted a ground stop was in January 2023, when all domestic departures were paused for less than two hours because of a pilot notification system went down. Before that, the last ground stop had been on September 11, 2001.
A few days ago we told you about how the FAA is getting rid of ATC's floppy disks, and just yesterday it started rolling out a new AI air traffic tool. While there's nothing concrete to suggest the AI system had anything to do with the outage, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin stood in front of some cameras to answer questions from the media, and he didn't outright deny that AI had anything to do with it making sure to say "we call it SI, remember," and that "we can't rule out anything at this point." He did say there are no indications of the outages being caused by a cyberattack or terror threat, but when asked again whether AI caused the problem, he said, "we're looking at that, that's part of something that obviously through CISA at DHS we're taking a look, we're working with our counterparts at all agencies."
In a tweet, ASI, the contractor who implemented that new AI system, said, "The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC." As of 6:45 p.m. ET, the latest info comes from sources that spoke to CBS News: "an update to the private communications network that connects America's air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage." That system is operated by L3Harris.
Mullin also said, "I don't want to say that this is a crisis, but it is, because we had to do a nationwide ground stoppage," and that Duffy is doing "a phenomenal job in crisis mode." When asked if it will be days or weeks before the problem is resolved, Mullin said it's too early to tell. Great!
Our very own Andy Kalmowitz is caught up in this mess, he was about to take off from Chicago O'Hare International Airport on a connecting flight while on his way home from driving the new Subaru Forester Wilderness Hybrid. Right as they were getting ready to taxi the ground stop was issued, and his pilot came over the intercom and explained the situation: "We're in a nationwide ground stop right now. That's not ground delay, that's ground stop. Basically the FAA has said, 'look, we're having radio problems at multiple centers across the nation; it's not just United Airlines, and it's not just Chicago. If you're airborne, that's great, you're coming in to land,' but they are not allowing anyone else to take off and get out there into the system. Which is understandable, but I don't like it, and I know you don't either." On CNN, Pete Muntean said, "this large scale radio frequency outage has caused pilots to resort to the emergency frequency that pilots use as a last resort."