Representative image. S340, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Why it matters
Thousands of travellers, including Indians flying to the US or connecting inside it, faced missed flights and connections over a weekend. The halt also shows how much flying depends on ageing ground systems that the US is now asking Congress for $30.1 billion more to fix.
US flights grounded: the United States stopped every departing flight in the country on Friday afternoon, US time, after a communications failure hit the air traffic control centres that guide planes between airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US aviation regulator, said the order was issued “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”. In India it was about 2.30 am to 3 am on Saturday, 14 November, when the halt began.
Planes already in the air were allowed to land. Planes on the ground could not take off. Flight tracking service FlightAware put the number of delayed or cancelled flights at nearly 7,000, Reuters and the Indian news agency ANI (Asian News International) reported.
What the FAA ground stop covered
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the FAA ground stop in a post on X. He said a communication issue was affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the regional centres that handle planes cruising between airports, and that FAA technicians were investigating. There are 22 such centres, according to ANI and the Times of India.
Shortly before the national order, the FAA had halted traffic in Chicago because of communications trouble there, Reuters reported. The agency’s instruction was that all departing traffic should stay grounded “until further notice”.
International flights were treated differently. The FAA said in its post that every flight had been accounted for and that international flights would be handled case by case. Eurocontrol, the body that manages air traffic across 42 European member states, suspended US-bound departures from those countries at the FAA’s request, the Times of India reported, citing Eurocontrol’s website.
When the Times of India filed its account, the FAA ground stop was in force until at least 11 pm US Eastern time on Friday, which is 9.30 am IST on Saturday. Officials had not given a time for normal operations to return.
US flights grounded: why the counts differ
Two very different numbers are going round for how many US flights were grounded, and both can be correct. They measure different things at different moments.
| Source | Figure | What it counts | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| FlightAware (via Reuters, ANI) | About 7,000 | Flights delayed or cancelled | Friday evening, US time |
| Cirium (via Times of India) | About 481 | Departures cancelled or more than 3 hours late | As of 4.40 pm Eastern time |
| Cirium (via Times of India) | 26,284 | Departures scheduled from US airports that day | Friday |
| Flightradar24 (via ANI) | About 4,042 | Flights in the air heading to US airports when the order came | Time of the order |
The Cirium figure was taken early, and it only counts long delays and cancellations, so it is far smaller. By Cirium’s own count, about 11,000 departures were still scheduled after 4 pm Eastern time, which is why the total kept growing through the evening.
What officials said caused the outage
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters outside the White House that the US air traffic control failure was a telecommunication outage. He said there was no indication so far of an attack on the United States, but that officials were not ruling out any cause, including a cyberattack. “This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11,” he said, ANI reported.
An airline source told CNN (the US news channel) that the FAA had informed carriers the problem was with network routers and was believed to have started at Chicago Midway International Airport, the Times of India reported. The FAA itself had not confirmed what broke in the US air traffic control network in the reports read for this article.
Two other possible links were ruled out by the people involved. Mullin said the outage was not connected to the Microsoft services disruption earlier in the week, and Microsoft said it had no sign the ground stop was related to its services. ASI, the company behind a new FAA planning tool called SMART (a scheduling and forecasting system) that studies schedules and weather and sends advice to controllers, said the halt was “not based on or a result of” its product.
Only the second halt of its kind since 2001
Friday’s FAA ground stop was the second nationwide halt of all departures since the attacks of 11 September 2001, Reuters reported. The other came in January 2023, when the FAA paused all domestic departures for less than two hours after a computer system failed.
US air traffic control has had repeated equipment failures and staff shortages, Reuters reported, while the FAA tries to replace ageing systems. Congress approved $12.5 billion last year for that overhaul, which includes replacing old copper lines with fibre-optic cable and upgrading airport radios, the Times of India reported. On Friday, the FAA and the White House asked lawmakers for another $30.1 billion, according to Reuters.
United Airlines said its domestic flights would not leave during the suspension, and American Airlines said it expected disruption for the rest of the day, the Times of India reported. Airports in New York, including John F Kennedy and LaGuardia, asked passengers to confirm their flight status before setting out.
What it means for travellers from India
The FAA ground stop covered departures from US airports. Pilots are trained to keep their assigned headings and then follow their filed flight plans if radio contact is lost, aviation professor Skip Bailey told the Associated Press, which is why stopping new take-offs was the first step. Flights heading into the US from abroad were left to case-by-case decisions by the FAA, so a flight from India or a connection through Europe could be held, delayed or allowed in depending on its timing. None of the reports read for this article gave a statement from an Indian airline.
With US flights grounded at the start of a weekend, anyone flying to or within the country, or with family on such flights, should check the airline’s own flight status page before leaving for the airport. Connections inside the US are the most likely to be missed, since domestic departures were the ones stopped. Earlier this month NewsPlainly reported how an IndiGo flight turned back to Bengaluru after a threat note, another case where safety rules halted a flight mid-plan.
The full Reuters report is available on ThePrint, and the Homeland Security Secretary’s remarks are in ANI’s copy on The Tribune.
Frequently asked questions
Why were all US flights grounded?
The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop after a communications issue hit all of its Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which guide planes between airports.
Was the US flight halt a cyberattack?
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of an attack so far, but officials have not ruled out any cause.
Are flights from India to the US affected?
The FAA said international flights would be handled case by case, so travellers should check with their airline before leaving.