The United States grounded every departing flight on Friday after a serious air traffic control communications failure, only the second nationwide shutdown of its kind since the 9/11 attacks.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the national ground stop citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”, US broadcasters including CNN and CBS reported. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the halt followed “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers”, with FAA technicians racing to find the fault.
In its message to carriers the regulator was blunt, telling airlines that “all departing traffic should remain groundstopped until further notice” and giving no estimate of when normal service would resume.
Planes already in the air were cleared to land, but nothing sitting on the ground could take off, and international arrivals were handled case by case. The trouble first surfaced in Chicago, where controllers lost reliable communications, before the FAA widened the halt to cover the entire country.
The White House moved to calm nerves, saying there was no sign of a “nefarious act”, CBS News reported. Even so, by late evening the order had been extended with no firm restart time, and when Portsmouth And checked the ground stop was still in force.
Only the second shutdown of its kind since 9/11
A blanket stop on every US departure is extraordinarily rare. The only previous one came in January 2023, when a computer failure paused take-offs across the country for less than two hours.
The backdrop is an ageing air traffic control network that Washington has been scrambling to modernise. Last year Congress approved 12.5 billion dollars to overhaul the FAA’s communications systems, and on the very day of this shutdown the agency and the White House asked for a further 30.1 billion dollars to tackle other weaknesses.
What it means for UK travellers
The knock-on effect reaches Britain fast. Transatlantic flights from Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester all depend on US airspace running smoothly, so anyone flying to or from America over the next few days could face cancellations and long waits while the backlog clears.
If you are travelling, it is worth reading up on how to reach Heathrow and Gatwick from Portsmouth before you set off, checking directly with your airline, and keeping an eye on the latest UK travel and breaking news as the situation develops.
