FAA issues US national ground stop on all flights

Flights were delayed at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which serves the nation's capital Image: Jonathan Ernst/REUTERSAdvertisementThe US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday issued a ground stop on all national flights. The FAA is the US government agency responsible for air traffic control. 

"All departing traffic should remain groundstopped until further notice," the FAA said. 

The agency said the ground stop is "due to extraordinary circumstance and reasons for safety." 

In a post on X, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the stop was due to a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. 

"FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them."    

US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that there was no indication this was an attack against the US. 

"This is a telecommunications outage," Mullin said. "All the flights are accounted for."  

Canada's air navigation service provider, NAV Canada, said it is closely monitoring the US ground stop and there was no impact on Canadian operations. 

"We continue to support the safe movement of air traffic in our airspace, including any aircraft that may be diverted," NAV Canada posted on X. 

It's the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when the FAA dealt with a system outage. Prior to that, the last ground stop was after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.