FAA lifts four-hour nationwide flight halt after air traffic control failure

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday evening, allowing flights to resume after a telecommunications failure halted departures across the country for more than four hours. The shutdown caused widespread disruption, leaving thousands of travellers facing cancellations, delays and lengthy waits at airports.

The FAA lifted the restrictions at 8.15pm Eastern Time (1.15am GMT on Saturday), after suspending departures at 3.54pm over concerns about communication systems used by air traffic controllers. Aircraft already in the air were permitted to land, while some international flights received clearance to depart before the nationwide restrictions were removed.

The disruption affected one of the world's busiest aviation networks. According to aviation data company Cirium, approximately 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart from US airports after 4pm on Friday.

Although flights were cleared to resume, officials warned that airlines would need time to reposition aircraft and crews and clear the backlog of delayed passengers.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the failure to ageing air traffic control technology and routers overwhelmed by data. Speaking at a White House news conference, he acknowledged that the FAA, rather than commercial airlines, was responsible for the disruption and urged Congress to provide additional funding to modernise the country's aviation infrastructure.

Duffy warned that similar shutdowns could occur without substantial investment in the system. He expressed confidence that normal operations would resume before the Thanksgiving holiday travel period, although he acknowledged that restoring flight capacity and accommodating affected passengers would take time.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said investigators had found no evidence that the outage resulted from a cyberattack or another deliberate threat.

However, he stressed that the investigation was continuing and that officials had not definitively ruled out all possible causes.

Airlines warned that disruption could continue into Saturday. JetBlue cancelled its remaining Friday evening flights, except for Europe-bound services departing from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Boston, and cautioned that further cancellations were expected the following day.

The shutdown was the first nationwide suspension of US flight departures since January 2023, when a malfunction in a critical FAA computer system disrupted air travel across the country. Before that, the previous nationwide grounding occurred following the September 11, 2001, attacks.