The United States grounded every plane in the sky on Friday. Not because of a terrorist attack but because of a hurricane.
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop about four hours after it was declared, delaying or canceling more than 11,000 US flights and throwing airports into chaos. More than 3,500 planes were already in the air when the order came down.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the trouble began at 3:36 p.m. when air traffic control centres experienced instability in radar and communications systems.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said. “Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and they started to give us inconsistent data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”
The Failure
The FAA told airlines the outages were the result of router malfunctions believed to have originated at Chicago Midway International Airport and rippled across the rest of the country. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a “nefarious attack.” It was just a telecommunications outage.
A telecommunications outage. That is all it took to ground the most powerful country in the world.
The briefing Friday evening with Duffy and Mullin quickly turned into a plea for funding from Congress to “fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system.” Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to fix the FAA’s ageing communications system. On Friday, the FAA and White House asked for another $30.1 billion.
The Chaos
The grounding left hundreds of thousands of passengers in limbo. Footage from airports showed gates full, planes waiting on taxiways, and passengers thronging concourses desperate for information.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the Trump administration to offer more clarity. “Americans are stuck at airports across the country,” he wrote on X. “They deserve answers, clear updates, and a plan to get home safely. Instead, the Trump Administration is correcting reporters on AI’s ‘preferred name.’ These are not serious people.”
The Bottom Line
The FAA grounded all US flights for several hours Friday after a router failure crippled the air traffic control system. More than 11,000 flights were delayed or canceled. Officials say the system is ancient and needs billions in funding. Congress has already approved $12.5 billion but the FAA wants another $30.1 billion.
