A nationwide FAA ground stop that halted most takeoffs across the United States was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET on Friday, more than four hours after it began. Officials said flights could resume, but delays and cancellations were expected as airports and crews faced disruption.
The FAA issued the stop at 3:44 p.m. ET, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” It remained unclear how quickly departures could recover. Overloaded airports and flight crews that had run out of time to operate could leave passengers stranded and trigger further delays or cancellations, according to the report.
At a White House press conference, Transportation Secretary Ryan Duffy attributed the outage to inconsistencies in data from radars and communications from aircraft at Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities, or TRACONs. He said analog telecom devices, including switches and routers, had become overloaded with data.
CBS News earlier reported, citing multiple sources, that an update to the air traffic control system’s private communications network, operated by L3Harris, caused a system reboot and outage. L3Harris had not responded to The Verge’s request for comment. At the press conference, Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed that patches to the existing system had sparked the issue.
Asked how the patches contributed to the outage, Duffy said: “By doing nothing, you inject way more risk into the system… I didn’t anticipate that we would have an outage like this.”
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