The airspace was reopened after the American aviation regulator (FAA) ordered all American airports on Friday to block all takeoffs as a precaution. This instruction was taken following “communication problems” affecting several air traffic control centers. The FAA, whose blocking order was relayed by the Minister of Transport Sean Duffy on its X account, specified that its technicians were working to determine the origin of the problem. The regulator added on X that there had been "a temporary telecommunications outage - as a precaution, all flights have been suspended." “Each flight has been recorded and international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
The FAA cited “exceptional circumstances.” “All departing traffic must remain grounded until further notice,” the government agency's official advisory said, adding that landings of incoming international flights would be handled on a case-by-case basis. According to flight tracking tool FlightAware, nearly 7,000 flights have so far been delayed or canceled. A total of 30,000 departures and arrivals were planned for the rest of Friday when the notice was published.
In press releases, both United Airlines and American Airlines indicated that current flights continue, but that no new flights will take off as long as the grounding measure remains in effect. According to our colleagues from the New York Times, present at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, a United Airlines employee told travelers to go home. In the meantime, major airports are gradually finding themselves saturated with grounded planes - authorities will probably divert some flights to other less congested airports.
This suspension decision is not due to a threat to the United States, said Minister of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. “This is not a new September 11,” the minister declared to the press at the White House, refusing however to rule out any possibility, including that of a cyberattack. “There is no indication at this time that this is a malicious attack against us. “It’s just a telecommunications outage right now,” he added, asserting that “Donald Trump has been informed.” “It’s going to take time. But, again, everyone is safe. All thefts are traced and there is no reason for the public to be concerned.”
The FBI, which is currently ruling out the possibility of a cyberattack, says it is investigating to “determine whether a software update is the cause of the major outage.” Microsoft, for its part, affirmed that the immobilization of the planes is not linked to the outage of its Outlook services, which occurred on Thursday. Radars and radio frequencies are affected by outages, according to CNN. The National Weather Service also announced that it was having communications and internet problems, although it was not known whether this was related to the FAA advisory.
The grounding order is already having effects at airports in neighboring countries. That of Pearson, in Toronto, informed that it would not receive any flights from the United States this Friday. In Mexico City, Benito Juarez International Airport urged travelers to check their flight status as some flights were affected.
For passengers at San Francisco airport, the news broke on the way. And since then, the crowd has continued to grow in front of the doors. Many travelers have the phone in hand to give news to their loved ones. “For now, people are waiting. We have not received any official information, apart from what we see in the media,” tells Le Figaro Marie*, stuck in the boarding area and whose flight to Paris was to take off at 3:10 p.m. local time. The only indication: a message from the crew, which reports any new points at 4:30 p.m. “Additional delay for this flight. We will keep you informed at 4:30 p.m., as soon as we have more information. Once again, due to the national shutdown of takeoffs, we anticipate an additional delay,” the crew announced to passengers.
Steve, who works in tech in San Francisco, is also waiting with his wife and their two children, aged two and five. The family was due to fly at 4:40 p.m. to London, where they planned to spend a few weeks with their family. She learned about the grounding of flights on the way to the airport and didn't plan anything for the children. “I remain optimistic. We're going to wait, buy water and if it lasts we'll go home,” confides the father, before adding: “It's crazy, this hasn't happened since September 11, which worries me a little.”
This suspension of flights comes on the same day as the White House requested Congress for an additional $30.1 billion in funding to modernize the air traffic control system in the United States. The Trump administration had already presented in May 2025 a plan for “complete modernization” of the air traffic control (ATC) system, some of which dated from the 1960s or still used floppy disks.
Friday's outage also comes just days after the FAA announced the nationwide deployment of an artificial intelligence tool, SMART, intended to help air traffic controllers avoid delays. The company Air Space Intelligence (ASI), which created the tool, denied being the cause of the problem: “The current suspension of takeoffs is neither linked to the SMART system, nor caused by it, nor by any other ASI product or by the integration of our technologies with the systems of the American Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) and air traffic control (ATC).”
The SMART tool had been presented for the first time two months earlier at airports in the Washington region. That day, hundreds of flights were also grounded due to communication problems with air traffic control services. An electrical fault caused a system outage and it was discovered that contractors had accidentally cut a fiber optic cable that was intended to serve as a backup.
Air traffic controllers depend on constant communication with pilots to manage their flights. Without reliable communication, allowing planes to take off is risky. Before issuing its advisory, the FAA suspended flights at O'Hare and Midway airports in Chicago, citing "equipment problems."
This is only the third time that the FAA has ordered the grounding of all flights nationwide: the first time was on September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the second time on January 11, 2023, due to a failure of the alert system intended to inform pilots of safety problems. This last immobilization lasted some 90 minutes.
