Live updates: FAA lifts nationwide ground stop

BREAKING: FAA lifts nationwide ground stop

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “no indication ” that anything “nefarious” was behind the ground stop, but blamed a telecommunications outage.

Transportation Secretary Duffy said tonight that switches in the air traffic control system became overloaded with data.

“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said at a briefing at the White House.

“We have TDM telecoms, so this is analog telecom,” Duffy said.”Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data.”

He said the routers “started to give us inconsistency in the data.”

Duffy said new switches worked, but it was the old hardware that went down. He called on Congress to fund improvements to the air traffic control system. He said President Donald Trump has requested the money from Congress for improvements.

The ground stop was sparked after “instability for our radar and our communications in our centers, in our TRACONS throughout the country,” Secretary Duffy said.

TRACON stands for Terminal Radar Approach Control and is an air traffic control center.

“We have procedures for this,” Duffy said at a news conference tonight.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin speaks as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy listens at a White House briefing tonight, lifting the ground stop. Alex Wong / Getty

“We didn’t lose all telecom, we didn’t lose all radar,” Duffy said. “But that instability, because of an abundance of caution and making sure we keep the American public safe, we did the ground stop.”

There were around 3,500 planes in the air when the ground stop was called at 3:36 p.m. Duffy said that last time he checked, there were around 400 in the airspace.

DHS Secretary Mullin says that there is no sign of a cyberattack in today’s ground stoppage.

“So far what we’ve seen there is no cyberattack. We’re still working through that process,” he said. “Our teams are working through that process.”

He said that things were progressing “in the right direction.”

Mullin said the public was never in any danger and the ground stop was out of an abundance of caution.

15m ago / 8:36 PM ESTThe national ground stop has been liftedThe FAA has lifted the nationwide ground stop, more than five hours after the initial public alert.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the airspace opened at 8:15 this evening.

The national FAA ground stop will be lifted imminently, a source familiar with the matter tells NBC News.

Orlando International Airport on Friday. Finn Gomez / Getty

However, resolving the impact will likely take time given many airline crews and planes are out of place, and considering pilot and flight attendant max duty time.

Shivani Hawkins had just landed in Los Angeles from the Bay Area when she learned about the nationwide ground stop.

She was traveling with her two young children and arrived for a flight tonight to Australia.

“We don’t have any idea what’s happening with our flight for the next six hours,” she said.

Shivani said the airline gave her family $30 food vouchers each, unprompted. “We’re just hanging out in the LAX area because Friday rush hour traffic has been brutal.”

Most days this week saw about 100 flight cancelations into and out of the U.S. — so far today, upwards of 5,300 flights have been canceled.

The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, a national nonprofit that represents the U.S. organ donation community, said it is closely monitoring the ground stop.

Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Friday. Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP via Getty

The group said when a flight is disrupted, organ procurement organizations (OPO) work to find safe alternatives, including ground transportation.

The association said in a statement it works “around the clock” to “give every donated organ the best possible chance to save a life.”

“Hearts and lungs are among the most time-sensitive organs to transport. If a delay threatens an organ’s viability, the OPO shares the updated arrival estimate with the receiving transplant team, which uses its clinical judgment to determine whether the transplant can safely proceed,” Allison Erickson, the AOPO president, said.

“We hope the ground stop is resolved soon for everyone affected.”

Gillian Horn and her fiance were on a Delta flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport, bound for a long-planned family trip to Morocco, when the pilot announced the national ground stop over the speakers this afternoon.

“It was obviously met by a huge chorus of groans. Everyone was kind of like, ‘No way!’” she told NBC News.

The couple already had a nightmare two days of travel as their original flight yesterday was cancelled due to weather.

Today, they arrived at the airport around 2 p.m. for their 4 p.m. flight to Atlanta then on to Marrakesh, when the ground stop was announced and they had to deplane.

The couple scrambled to rebook flights and decided to book one out of the U.S. in hopes of avoiding the ground stop to make it to Morocco. In total, they’ve been rebooked six times since yesterday.

She described Terminal Four as packed, the Delta help desk line “astronomically long,” and many passengers leaving altogether.

Horn said around 6 p.m. she observed that flights to Europe were still planning to depart.

“We were sitting at a random gate, and it was at Catania, Italy. Out of the blue around 6 p.m. they go whoever to Catania, this flight is going to board in an hour,” she said. “There were claps, actual cheering and claps from the section.”

That inspired her and her fiancé to wait it out. Their flight to Paris was originally set to depart at 7 p.m. but got delayed twice to 9 p.m. She’s hopeful to board soon.

“It could be worse,” she said. “If we were stuck on the tarmac. Could be worse if we weren’t together. … At the end of the day, it’s fine. We want to get there safely. But we want to get there.”

The last time the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, after files in a system critical for pilots were accidentally deleted.

The error prompted a computer outage that lasted approximately an hour and a half, Department of Transportation officials said at the time.

The system that was damaged was NOTAM, or Notice to Air Missions system, which alerts pilots to potential dangers.

There was no evidence of a cyberattack, the Federal Aviation Administration said at the time. Instead, the department blamed contract personnel for the outage, saying they accidentally deleted files while working to correct the synchronization between databases.

The FAA said it made the necessary repairs to the system and had taken steps to make it more resilient.

President Donald Trump is getting constant updates on the situation with the nationwide ground stop, according to a senior White House official.

The FAA ordered the ground stop this afternoon, and it will run through at least 11 tonight.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication yet that “this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunications outage.”

There have been more than 10,00 U.S. flights delayed and over 4,000 cancellations today amid an extremely rare nationwide ground stop, according to a tracking website.

Denver International Airport on Friday. J. David Ake / Getty

At 7:30 tonight, FlightAware showed 10,079 US-related delays and 4,238 US-related cancelations.

Those numbers are far higher than in previous days. Yesterday, there were around 6,800 U.S.-related delays and 1,024 U.S.-related cancellations, according to the site.

Wednesday only had 3,424 delays and 99 cancellations in the U.S., it said.

Travelers have formed a long line at Chicago O’Hare International Airport’s baggage services desk. Among their questions: Where is their luggage? When will they get it?

2h ago / 7:18 PM ESTSpaceX allowed to launch rocket despite ground stop SpaceX was able to launch a rocket during the ground stop because the agency already had flight prohibitions around the launch site before the national ground stop was initiated.

“The FAA had already cleared airplanes around it, so it gave a nice path all the way up into space,” Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety expert, said. “All of that airspace above Texas and through the trajectory of the rocket was already cleared. There were already flight prohibitions in place.”

Guzzetti previously worked for the FAA and was involved in rocket launch preparations for the agency.

SpaceX launched its 15th uncrewed flight of its Starship rocket with the hopes that it would be the first round-trip rocket voyage back to the spot where it left Earth.

The launch took place in Texas just a few minutes after its opening window and the Starship entered orbit around the Earth just after 5 p.m. local time.

However, the company abandoned plans to return the rocket’s booster and collect it at the launch pad. Instead, the booster splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico after the company aborted the maneuver. SpaceX hopes to retrieve the upper stage of the rocket tomorrow after it orbits Earth about 14 times and returns to Earth.

An outage that affected millions of Microsoft customers around the world does not appear to be linked to the ground stop, the company said.

“Microsoft has no indication that the FAA nationwide ground stop is related to the recent service disruption,” a spokesperson said.

Danielle Curry heard about the nationwide ground stop on her way to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport but still went to inquire about her flight.

“They don’t know if the flights are going to even go today, so they let me change it to tomorrow,” she said.

“I just wanted to get home,” she said. “But my aunt lives here, so I’m going back to my aunt’s house, so I’m lucky compared to most.”

But the uncertainty about the cause of the extraordinary ground stoppage, coupled with world events, left Curry uneasy.

“It’s a little scary, like, is it cyberattack? Like, what is actually happening?” she said.

Officials have said that there were no initial indications of a cyberattack, but that a cause for the telecommunication outage had not yet been determined.

NBA, NHL and college teams were left stranded as they tried to reach their destinations, and NFL teams were left to wonder whether the issue would be resolved in time for them to travel to their games this weekend.

Most college football teams playing tomorrow travel the day before their game, and the stoppage left many schools — including No. 2 Utah, eighth-ranked Texas and No. 9 Tennessee — at a standstill as they departed for road games.

Meanwhile, the Nets were among five NBA teams scheduled to fly today for games on Saturday. They had just boarded the team plane in New Orleans after playing the Pelicans earlier this week when their flight to Memphis was halted in place.

There are 14 scheduled games in the NHL tomorrow. And while the Panthers made it to St. Louis for their game before the stoppage began, the Sharks were among those that were left waiting to leave for their game in Utah.

The FAA did not provide a timeline for restarting flights, leaving sporting events taking place beyond tomorrow in limbo. That includes most of the Week 10 schedule in the NFL along with numerous college sporting events.

The National Weather Service said its radars are fully operational and working normally.

“Outdated content from isolated webpages stating otherwise has been circulating, but NWS radars are operating normally,” the agency said.

NBC News’ weather unit confirmed that a page on the agency’s site associated with public-facing radar data was down, but the site is now operational and all radar sites across sites across the U.S. were working.

FedEx, the world’s largest cargo airline, is among the parcel delivery services that are monitoring the ground stop, saying customers can track the status of their shipments through the company’s website.

“We are prepared to activate contingency plans to minimize service disruptions and will resume normal flight operations as soon as the FAA permits,” said Shannon Davis, a spokesperson for FedEx.

The FAA’s ground stop applies to all departing flights at U.S. airports and therefore affects cargo and package shipping operations that rely on air transport.

U.S. airlines move about 61,000 tons of goods — from letters to packages — to and from more than 220 countries daily, according to the industry trade group Airlines for America.

FedEx has nearly 700 aircraft that operate around the globe, shipping an average of 17 million packages and 20 million pounds of freight daily, according to the company’s website. Most of those shipments are made in the U.S.

Gerardo Lopez was hoping to escape Chicago for sunny San Diego but was one of the travelers whose plans have been put on ice by the nationwide ground stoppage.

“It’s my only trip this year, so yes, it’s frustrating,” he told NBC Chicago at Chicago Midway International Airport. “I don’t get too much vacation.”

“I just wish they’d get their act together soon, so we can get out of here,” he said. “If not, I’ve got to head back home.”

We are more than three hours into the nationwide ground stop, which is an extremely rare occurrence.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FAA ordered an unprecedented nationwide ground stop. All civilian air traffic across U.S. airspace was halted and airborne planes were ordered to land at the nearest available airports.

In January 2023, the FAA grounded all flights, blaming a failure in the Notice to Air Missions system, which alerts pilots to a host of potential dangers.

Even though it’s a rail service, Amtrak said air travel issues are creating frustrations for its passengers.

“We’re currently experiencing higher-than-normal call volumes due to ongoing airline issues,” it said on social media.

Sierra Gould was on the last leg of a flight from Denver to her home in Corpus Christi, Texas, when the connecting flight from Houston was stuck on the ground by the national flight stoppage.

“Trying to remain calm, because panicking isn’t going to do any thing,” she said at Houston International Airport.

She hoped her flight would still happen, but wasn’t optimistic.

“I think I’m going to have someone drive out here and pick me up and go home,” Gould said. “Thank God I’m only three hours away.”

But a big concern is her luggage, because it was to be part of the connecting flight.

There’s a general sense of confusion among passengers at Denver International Airport amid a lack of information.

Very few travelers seem to grasp the big picture — that all outgoing planes across the nation have been grounded — and many airport TVs are broadcasting sports.

People in lines to rebook flights are seemingly unaware of the scale of the travel headache that’s unfolding across the U.S. There are big crowds and long lines for everything because people are stuck at the airport and aren’t leaving as usual.

Many people are calling their families and customer service to seek info and updates. The lines for food are growing longer and seating is getting harder to come by.

San Francisco International Airport said minutes ago that Pacific-bound flights have been cleared to leave, including to Hawaii and Asia.

It said that the clearance occurred at 3 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET).

At Newark Liberty International Airport, personnel in the control tower said the situation is “a whole mess right now,” according to LiveATC. “We’re running out of space” and “there’s significant gate issues” were comments also heard on the live audio feed.

“I’m as much in the dark as everyone else. I’m not getting any information from anybody,” one controller at Newark said, according to the feed.

Air Space Intelligence, the AI tech startup that is a vendor for the FAA on its new SMART system for air traffic control, said its software didn’t cause today’s nationwide ground stop.

“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,” the company said in a statement posted to X.

The startup, which is based in Boston, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

3h ago / 6:09 PM ESTRedundancies in place so pilots can still receive information to safely land, aviation expert saysThere are multiple layers of communications for air traffic, and aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said that it’s the high-altitude control centers that are experiencing the outage today.

Pilots are trained to handle radio outages such as this and there are other means to relay information to them to ensure planes are spaced properly for landing, he said.

“There are redundancies in place so pilots can get this information and a lot of times the information can be communicated digitally on a screen in the cockpit,” he said.

“When you’re flying in high altitude in a cruise flight, you’re talking to an air route traffic control center that’s run by the FAA and that’s the one that’s having the problem,” Guzzetti said.

“Then they will hand you off to an approach controller that’s near a major city. You talk to the approach controller, which is a mid-level altitude, as you are making your descent to the airport, and then that controller hands you off one last time to the local controller, who’s at the control tower.”

At this early stage of the investigation into today’s communications outage, there is no indication that the incident was caused by malicious activity, multiple officials from multiple agencies involved tell NBC News.

They say they haven’t seen any evidence of the type of activity normally associated with a cyberattack.

A passenger sits next to the departure board at Miami International Airport. Joe Raedle / Getty

But the officials cautioned that it is early in the investigation and that the findings change as they continue to dig into the problem.

Three senior officials said there’s nothing that indicates a connection between today’s FAA incident and Microsoft’s widespread outage.

Today’s nationwide ground stop comes soon after the FAA implemented changes to the air traffic control system that it said would add the use of AI. It’s not clear, though, if the two are related.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled the system — known as Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART — in September, saying it “centralizes 200 data streams” into one platform. The benefits would include fewer delays and cancellations, he said.

The SMART platform drew skepticism from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which said in a statement in September that it was not involved in the design, testing or implementation of the system. Democratic lawmakers also pushed back, asking the FAA in a letter Oct. 9 to pause the changes.

But after testing the system at airports in the Washington area, the FAA said this week that the platform was active nationwide and would use AI to help inform routing and schedule recommendations, according to reports in Flying magazine and Ars Technica.

“Using AI, SMART analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions, and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur,” the FAA says in a description of the program.

Planes are parked at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. John Locher / AP

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was asked by a reporter outside the White House about a possible connection between AI and the ground stop. He responded: “You just can’t rule out anything at this point. We’re going through that process, and we’re going to find out what happened.”

A Republican leadership aide told NBC News early this evening that senior members have not yet received a briefing from administration officials on the nationwide ground stop.

Separately, a senior lawmaker told NBC News that they have gotten no information. When they inquired with officials, the lawmaker says they were told there is no information to share at this point.

The FAA blamed today’s ground stop on a telecommunications outage.

“There has been a temporary telecommunications outage — out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted,” it said on X.

“Every flight has been accounted for, and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis,” it said.

Delta Airlines planes are seen at LaGuardia Airport in New York, today. Ryan Murphy / AP

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said that today’s outage is “extraordinary.”

Guzzetti, who said he doesn’t know the cause of the outage, stressed that pilots are trained to operate through communications outages and that there are redundancies in place for such instances. Pilots “could get information relayed through other means” to ensure planes are spaced properly for landing.

He added that the situation is moving from a safety issue to a massive logistics problem.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that there is still communication with planes despite the ground stop.

“My understanding is that we can still communicate,” Mullin said this afternoon. “It’s just that it’s at different levels and clarity that we can get to.”

“But there’s redundancy in most communications,” he said. “So, as you can see, there’s still planes landing, and so there’s still communications going on.”

With all departing flights grounded, some airports are beginning to run out of space for jets.

A source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News that Reagan National Airport is at capacity and that Chicago O’Hare is nearing capacity, meaning there is no place for planes to park and that some of the planes may have to divert to other airports.

4h ago / 5:31 PM ESTSec. Mullin says FAA ground stop was caused by 'telecommunication outage'01:51Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters the nationwide ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration was the result of a telecommunication outage. He also assured that the issue was not the result of some form of attack or hack.

Deveren Werne was in Indianapolis headed to Chicago this afternoon on an American Airlines flight when the pilots announced that all flights were grounded.

“At first the pilot announced that there was some kind of radio issue,” Werne, 55, of Greenville, South Carolina, told NBC News. “Then a little while later, the pilot said something like, ‘There is something going on that’s more serious than that.’”

Werne, a consultant who helps manufacturers and other industries adapt AI technology, said he is a frequent flyer and this was a first for him. He said there was “a mixture of emotions” from his fellow passengers on hearing the announcement.

“Then I started hearing from other friends who were on planes, including one in Chicago who was stuck on a runway,” Werne said. “Right now our plane is heading back to the terminal so at least we’re going to be able to deplane.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin at the White House. Alex Brandon / AP

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “no indication as of yet” that there was anything “nefarious” that caused the ground stop. He said it was the result of a telecommunications outage “as of now.”

Mullin said President Donald Trump has been briefed and they “are not ruling out anything at this point” in terms of what caused the communications issue. He said those currently on flights have no reason for concern.

“We are assured that everybody is safe,” he said, adding that it was unprecedented.

A flight board showing delayed flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, today in Arlington, Va. Tom Brenner / AP

Planes across the country were grounded and not allowed to take off this afternoon after a “ground stop” was issued.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the ground stop at 4:16 p.m. today on X.

He said the Federal Aviation Administration “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”

The order means flights are prevented from taking off.

“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy said. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”