For more than four hours, American skies emptied out. Officials now say old equipment, and not an attack, brought the system to a halt.
A Plane Stops Before Takeoff
Jeff Dubner, a Washington attorney, was on an Alaska Airlines flight home from Los Angeles. The plane was already half an hour late and taxiing towards the runway when it came to a halt.
He told AP it sounded like more than the usual delay, and said he looked forward to finding out why. Across the country, thousands of others were asking the same question.
What Happened On Friday
A telecommunications outage hit air traffic control centres across the United States. A notice from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cited “extraordinary circumstances” caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centres.
A nationwide ground stop followed, lasting more than four hours. After a few hours the airspace was reopened and the halt was lifted.
A Rare Event
It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that, the last one came after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The Numbers
According to FlightRadar24, more than 4,700 flights were cancelled and 10,000 delayed on Friday, with another 700 already cancelled for Saturday. Some 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to take off from US airports after 4 pm Eastern, which raised the likelihood of further cancellations and diversions.
Many flights were diverted to airports including Chicago O’Hare, Denver International, Dallas Fort Worth and Ronald Reagan Washington National. Aviation analysts told Reuters it could take days for airlines to restore their schedules.
The Officials’ Explanation: Overloaded Routers
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the switches and routers became overloaded with data and began giving inconsistent readings, which led the agency to shut the system down. He said the FAA had not lost radar or communications entirely and was able to bring thousands of aircraft already in the air safely to the ground.
Duffy pointed to ageing hardware as a key factor. He said it was the old hardware that went down, and put a question to the public: do you want Congress to fund the upgrade? He described the air traffic control system as incredibly old.
No Attack, Officials Say
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a deliberate attack or a threat to national security. He also dismissed any link to Microsoft’s recent service outage, saying a lot of people were making that jump but there was no connection.
He said teams were still working through the process, and told travellers there was no reason to be concerned about loved ones who were flying.
A Slow Road Back
Duffy warned that getting planes back in the air would take time and that traffic would return to normal slowly. The disruption was expected to affect planned flights through at least late Friday night.
What Happens Next?
How long will airlines take to clear the backlog of stranded passengers? Will Congress respond to Duffy’s question and fund an upgrade? Will the investigation confirm that ageing hardware alone was to blame? And how soon before travellers trust that the system will not stop again?
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Khushi Patel is a Senior Sub Editor at NewsX, covering automotive, technology, Lifestyle, entertainment, and mainstream news. She previously worked as a Copy Editor at Times Network and has written automotive editorial content, including comparison pieces, for TimesDrive.
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