FAA Issues Emergency Ground Stop for All US Flights for ‘Extraordinary Circumstances’

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency ground stop for all flights in the United States on Nov. 13 for “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”

The alert applied to all aircraft operations at all airports until further notice, the alert said.

The order was issued following a communication problem “impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy said. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”

About 3,100 aircraft bound for U.S. airports were in the air when the nationwide ground stop was ordered, according to the live air traffic radar service Flight Radar 24.

Denver pilots were told the stop could be in effect until 10 p.m. local time, according to the Air Traffic Control app.

The FAA’s ground stop order follows Microsoft’s all-day outage the previous day that took out email and other work systems.

The tech giant had restored servers by Nov. 13.

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