US grounds all departing flights nationwide over air traffic communications outage - Geo News
WASHINGTON: US aviation authorities on Friday ordered a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights after a communications problem disrupted operations at air traffic control centres, causing widespread confusion among passengers and raising questions about the resilience of the country's aviation infrastructure.
US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication so far that the disruption was caused by a deliberate attack or posed a threat to the country, although officials were keeping all possibilities open.
"There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us; it's just a telecommunications outage, as of right now," Mullin said on Friday, adding that officials were "not ruling out anything at this point".
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had ordered a nationwide ground stop for departing flights following a communications issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centres. The agency said its technicians were investigating the disruption.
The order prevented flights from taking off across the United States, although the supplied FAA statement did not indicate that arriving flights had also been grounded.
The disruption immediately affected airport operations, leaving travellers uncertain about departure schedules. At Las Vegas airport, a Southwest Airlines check-in desk reportedly told passengers that no flights would be taking off for 24 hours.
The FAA has issued similar restrictions in recent years in response to communications problems affecting individual airlines or airports, with such disruptions generally lasting a few hours or less. A nationwide grounding affecting the entire US aviation system, however, is considerably rarer.
The last major nationwide ground stop occurred in January 2023, when the FAA suspended departures following an outage affecting its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. The system provides pilots with information about potential hazards, changes to airport facilities and other developments relevant to flight operations.
That disruption lasted just under two hours and was widely regarded at the time as the first nationwide grounding since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Friday's disruption came a day after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy formally requested $30.1 billion from Congress to upgrade and modernise the country's air traffic control system.
"This investment is critical to complete the modernisation of our national airspace -- delivering a resilient telecommunications backbone for air traffic controllers, modern hardware and software, state-of-the-art control towers, and world-class airport infrastructure," Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
The funding request underscores ongoing efforts to modernise the country's air traffic infrastructure, including its communications networks, control towers and operational technology.
