The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States ordered on Friday the total grounding of all outbound flights nationwide, citing "extraordinary circumstances and safety reasons," reported the AP agency. The measure, which took effect around 3:54 p.m. Eastern Time, affected the 22 regional air traffic control centers in the country.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, appeared before the press on the grounds of the White House to calm the alarms that immediately arose among public opinion. "This is not another 9/11 — I simply cannot repeat it enough. People are making that assumption. This is a disruption in telecommunications. This is very different," he stated.
Mullin confirmed that President Donald Trump was informed about the incident and that the government is operating in "full crisis response mode". "There is no reason for the public to be scared," the official insisted, adding that all flights that were already in the air have been accounted for and are being managed individually.
The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, traced the origin of the problem to a communications failure that simultaneously impacted all air traffic control centers, with FAA technicians actively investigating. The reported failures affected radio frequencies and, in some cases, radar, with the first reports coming from Chicago, New York, and Boston before spreading to the rest of the country.
In response to the question of whether it could be a cyberattack, Mullin was cautious: "We are not ruling anything out at this moment. The first thing we want to do is ensure everyone's safety." The official also announced that the government is investigating whether a new traffic control system based on artificial intelligence, which was being implemented that very day, is related to the disruptions. "We are looking into that. It is part of something that, obviously through CISA at DHS, we are reviewing," he noted, referencing the cybersecurity agency of the Department of Homeland Security.
The operational impact was significant: nearly 7,000 flights were delayed or canceled according to the FlightAware platform, while Flightradar24 recorded approximately 4,042 aircraft en route to U.S. airports at the time the order was issued.
Former United Airlines pilot and aviation expert Steve Arroyo noted that the incident bears similarities to a regional communications outage that affected the northeast of the country last September, but this time on a national scale. Arroyo attributed it to the outdated technology used by the FAA: "If you don't have that capability, whether because the old cables they have are simply deteriorated or for any other reason, you have to keep the planes on the ground. And not put them in the air where you're risking the ability to communicate with them."
This is the first complete shutdown of U.S. airspace since January 2023, when the NOTAM system—responsible for distributing critical safety information prior to takeoff—experienced a computer failure that resulted in nearly 9,000 delays and 1,300 cancellations. Before that incident, the only similar occurrence was the closure of airspace following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The FAA's operational notice set an initial expiration time of 11 p.m. Eastern Time, which would imply a minimum duration of approximately seven hours, although Mullin warned that it was "too early" to talk about specific timelines: "This is not going to be resolved and turned around in an hour. This is going to take time."
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