The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded all flights nationwide on Friday due to safety reasons.
The FAA said in a statement that the action was “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 grounded until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis,” it said.
Shortly before the FAA issued its alert, major Chicago airports – O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport – issued a ground stop alert due to an “equipment outage,” NBC Chicago reported.
It is unclear if the issues in Chicago prompted the nationwide ground stop order.
An airport board in Miami is seen displaying a message saying there has been a “problem”.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled owing to the nationwide grounding of planes across the US.
More than 7,000 flights have been delayed or cancelled so far, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
That number is expected to rise rapidly by the minute as the airports release more information.
FAA statement in full:
The FAA has grounded all flights across the US.
“Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” a spokesman said.
“Attention all aircraft operators, by order of the Federal Aviation Command Centre, all airports are ground stopped.
“All departing traffic should remain grounded until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis”.
According to Flight Radar, there are currently 3,100 airborne flights.
The grounding of all flights across the US has only happened twice before.
The most notable occasion was September 11, 2001 when US authorities shut down American airspace following the terrorist attacks.
The other incident happened in January 2023, when the FAA paused all domestic departures for less than two hours.
Sean Duffy, the US transport secretary, said the stoppage was owing to a “communications issue”.
“The @FAAnews issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centres,” he wrote.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”
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