The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered this Friday afternoon the suspension of domestic flights “due to extraordinary circumstances and for security reasons” due to problems in air traffic control communications. The order affects thousands of flights across the country, while hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded without knowing when they will be able to resume their trips.
The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, confirmed the interruption of air traffic through a publication on social networks where he explained, without giving many details, that a communications problem affects all air traffic control centers on routes in the country. “FAA technicians are investigating the problem,” added the Trump cabinet member. The communications problems would be affecting air traffic radars and radio frequencies.
In total, some 2,630 flights are suspended and more than 26,100 are delayed, according to statistics from the flight management platform Flightaware. If only domestic flights departing or arriving from national airports are counted, 1,985 are affected by the interruption and 10,494 suffer delays. A map from Flightradar, another flight tracking website, reflects how all US airports are suffering serious mishaps due to communications failure.
The FAA warned of the suspension of all domestic flights around four in the afternoon, East Coast time, around ten at night in Madrid. "All departing flights must remain grounded until further notice. Incoming international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis," the FAA said in a statement.
At around 4:30 in the afternoon, just over 3,000 flights were still arriving at US airports, according to the AirNav Radar flight tracking platform. They were the last aircraft to take off before the suspension of ground operations. The FAA "still doesn't know what's going on; it's affecting different facilities in different ways," an airline source told CNN. “Ten minutes ago, they were on a crisis call and there was still no clear answer as to the cause.”
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, clarified that it was only a communications problem and ruled out that after the suspension of domestic flights there was any criminal act, although the agents continued to investigate the specific causes and did not rule out any scenario. "So far, there is no indication that this is a malicious attack against us. For now, it is only a telecommunications interruption," he said at a press conference from the White House.
Major airlines are issuing messages to alert travelers of delays and cancellations. United Airlines and American Airlines, two of the largest airlines in the country, published statements on the social network X explaining that flights that are already in the air will continue the journey until the trip is completed. United Airlines explained that while domestic flights will not depart, “the FAA is managing international departures on a case-by-case basis.” “At American Airlines, all staff will be working at full capacity so that customers can continue their travel as soon as possible once the FAA lifts this national restriction,” he said.
Markwayne Mullin, in charge of security issues in the Trump Government, appeared before the media outside the White House to try to send a message of calm in the face of the serious air management incident. “Do we already know what caused it?” he asked. "No, we are going to analyze it. But I am not going to make assumptions," he said while not wanting to venture on how long it would take to return to normal.
The most affected airports are Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Chicago's O'Hare, and LaGuardia and J.F. Kennedy of New York, according to Flightaware. And the airlines that register the most interruptions are Skywest and Delta Airlines.
Mullin insisted that the immediate priority is to ensure that planes still in the air can land smoothly and safely, but admitted that he has no information on how long the suspension may last. “We haven't talked about any deadline,” he said. “This is going to take time,” he continued. “So it’s not going to be resolved or solved in an hour.”
Meanwhile, thousands of passengers were accumulating in the terminals of American airports. Statistics reveal that every day just over two million passengers take domestic flights in the United States. If the disruption lasts too long, it could cause chaos just days before the biggest travel period of the year, when many Americans travel to reunite with their families for Thanksgiving.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, who is in charge of the Border Patrol and ICE agents, responsible for mass deportations and indiscriminate raids against immigrants, avoided comparing the air interruption with other past episodes and ruled out any relationship with the attacks of September 11, 2001: "This is not the same as 9/11. That is a path I am not going to travel."
The last time a general suspension of flights was declared nationwide was in January 2023, when a breakdown occurred in the pilot notification system. Before that, the last time it had happened was after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
EL PAÍS contacted the FAA about the reasons for the suspension and has not received a response at the moment.
Friday's outage comes just days after the FAA announced it will begin deploying an artificial intelligence (AI) tool at domestic airports to help controllers avoid delays, according to The New York Times. The new program was launched a couple of months ago at Washington airports. But it did not have the best opening: the start coincided with a day in which other failures occurred in air traffic communications that caused the interruption of hundreds of flights due to the accidental cutting of a fiber optic line of the communications installation.
Following the federal agency's announcement, delays began to be announced at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. Some customers milled around the counters to ask what was happening with their luggage and stopovers. There are brief explanations from the staff. “I know you have a lot of questions, but I don't have the answers,” explains one of the airport hostesses over the public address system. “Every single airline and plane is grounded.” “No airline, no one, is flying,” says one employee. “No one is going anywhere,” adds another.
One of the passengers waiting patiently next to door C1 is David Tapia. He arrived with his team on Tuesday in Las Vegas to work on the Latin Grammys ceremony. Today I was flying back to Los Angeles. "Closing airports across the country is a big deal, being Friday. And it's Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious, but it's the unlucky day."
In 2023, a computer failure completely paralyzed takeoffs at airports in the United States, causing the cancellation of more than a thousand flights and tens of thousands of delays throughout the country. That failure left the Notifications to Air Missions (NOTAM) system inoperative, which alerts aircraft pilots and other flight personnel about dangers on the route or changes in the services or procedures of airport facilities.
