A nationwide ground stop was ordered Friday by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, immediately halting all departing flights across the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated in a press conference that there was “no indication as of yet” that anything “nefarious” caused the ground stop, and suggested that it was due to a broad telecommunications outage.
The FAA said in a statement that “Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis.”
Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was due to a “communication issue” and that “FAA technicians are investigating.”
United Airlines, one of the four largest airlines in the nation, said that the order did not apply to in-transit aircraft.
According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, there are 26,284 flights scheduled to depart on November 13 from the US. As of 5:50 p.m., 600 flights have been diverted so far, with 496 of those 600 flights (82.7%) returning to their origin airport.
The last time a nationwide ground stop occurred in the US was in January 2023 following a computer outage in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) pilot notification system (NOTAM).
Cirium reported that at this time 481 flights have been canceled or no fly nationally, representing 1.83% of the total flights scheduled to depart from US airports today.