Overview
- The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop on departing flights on Friday after communications instability at regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers led technicians to halt departures for safety.
- The order lasted roughly four hours and was lifted around 8:15 p.m. ET, with limited departures allowed while controllers and airlines worked to restore normal operations.
- The stoppage forced thousands of cancellations and delays, leaving large numbers of passengers stranded and forcing airlines to reposition aircraft and crews over the coming days.
- U.S. officials say the immediate cause was overloaded legacy switches, routers and copper lines that showed inconsistencies when new systems were added; investigators from DHS and the NSA are involved and are examining vendor links including reports about L3Harris’ telecom network while AirSpace Intel denied its SMART system caused the outage.
- The outage has renewed pressure for a major overhaul of U.S. air‑traffic infrastructure after Congress approved $12.5 billion last year, with administration officials urging an additional $30–50 billion to replace aging equipment and improve resilience.