U.S. Airspace Reopened After Four‑Hour National Ground Stop

Overview

• The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a national halt to all departures on Friday after instability in radar and communications at regional air‑traffic control centers left controllers unable to complete safe departures.
• After more than four hours the FAA lifted the ground stop and began a phased resumption of departures, but airlines reported thousands of cancellations and delays and said recovery of schedules would take days.
• Federal agencies including the FAA, DOT, DHS, NSA and FBI opened a joint probe that so far has found no confirmed cyberattack and is focused on a problematic router installation by L3Harris and overloaded, decades‑old telecoms equipment.
• International authorities complied with FAA guidance by holding flights bound for the United States, which added global ripple effects including diversions, reroutings and suspended transatlantic departures.
• The White House and transport officials used the outage to press Congress for large new funding to replace aging control‑center hardware and networks, saying modernized routers, switches and resilient telecom links are needed to avoid repeat failures.