Takeoffs from airports throughout the US largely stopped on Friday after the FAA issued a national ground stop “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” while planes in the air will be allowed to land. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tweeted:
The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that there is currently no reason to suspect a cyberattack or other national security threat, or any connection to the recent Microsoft Outlook outage, but that so far no cause has been ruled out for the “telecommunications outage.” He also said international flights and departures are being handled on a case-by-case basis, and NBC News reported that at least one flight had been seen departing the Boston airport.
When asked about any possible connection to the cloud-based AI Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) system that recently expanded nationwide, he said they were looking into that. Air Space Intelligence (ASI), the company awarded a 12-year $875 million contract to deploy that and other systems, denied any connection, tweeting “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.”
Jon Ostrower of The Air Current reports that the FAA has said to airlines that the stop is “due to several impacts to ATC Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities.” The flight tracking site FlightAware lists 10,494 US flights as delayed as of 6:16PM ET.
