INDIANAPOLIS — The Federal Aviation Administration grounded every departing flight in the United States for more than four hours Friday afternoon after a telecommunications outage disrupted the network of air traffic control centers that guide planes between airports — the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023.
The order, issued at 3:54 p.m. ET Friday, halted departures at every U.S. airport, including Indianapolis International Airport, the closest commercial airport to Clinton, Carroll and Boone Counties. The FAA lifted the ground stop around 8:15 p.m., but airlines and airports across the country were still working through cancellations and delays late Friday night.
The disruption reached deep into central Indiana. By 7:30 p.m., Indianapolis International had recorded 50 cancellations and 106 delays, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware. Airport officials estimated earlier in the evening that roughly 2,000 to 3,000 passengers were affected on about 25 departing flights, and FlightAware showed the last plane to depart Indianapolis left at 3:36 p.m. local time.
A Telecommunications Outage
The FAA said the ground stop was imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” after a communication problem affected the 22 regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide.
“There has been a temporary telecommunications outage — out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted,” the FAA said in a statement. “Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FAA technicians were investigating the outage and promised updates as information became available.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters outside the White House that there was no indication of a hostile act behind the outage.
“There was no indication as of yet this was a nefarious attack against us,” Mullin said. “It’s just a telecommunications outage.”
Mullin said officials were not ruling anything out, including a possible connection to a widespread Microsoft outage the day before, and said the cause was not yet known.
Impact on Travelers
Planes already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, and officials stressed that every airborne flight was accounted for. But planes on the ground could not take off, leaving thousands of passengers waiting at gates across the country.
At Indianapolis International, travelers watched departure boards flip from delays to cancellations through the evening. Mike Daugherty, who was at the airport waiting for his wife, whose return flight home from a family member’s military funeral in Florida had left her stranded in Chicago, said he wanted more answers about the outage.
“Is that really the issue, or is it something else?” Daugherty told USA Today.
The scale of the disruption was enormous. Nearly 7,000 flights were delayed or canceled nationwide by Friday evening, according to Reuters, and FlightAware later tallied more than 10,000 delays and more than 4,000 cancellations. More than 700 flights into, out of, or within the United States were already canceled for Saturday, raising the likelihood that the ripple effects will continue into the weekend.
A Rare Order
The FAA has now issued a nationwide ground stop only three times in modern history: after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, during the January 2023 failure of the NOTAM pilot-alert system, and Friday.
Aviation experts said the outage points to the aging technology that underpins the nation’s air traffic control system. Steve Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot and aviation expert, said controllers had no choice but to keep planes on the ground.
“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground,” Arroyo told The Associated Press. “And not put them in the air where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them.”
What Comes Next
Air traffic controllers at Indianapolis began telling pilots to refile their flight plans minutes before the ground stop was formally lifted, and departures resumed across the country as facilities recovered.
Travelers with flights scheduled this weekend should check their flight status directly with their airline before leaving for the airport, airport officials advised.