Americans are facing another day of severe travel disruption after the worst aviation crisis since 9/11 left more than 1.5 million passengers stranded and thousands of flights canceled.
Trump administration officials warned that the disruption could happen again. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin described the incident as a “national emergency.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the nationwide halt was triggered by “extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons,” citing communication problems at regional air traffic control centers.
The five-hour ground stop was lifted shortly before 8:30 p.m. ET on Friday, but its impact is expected to continue throughout the weekend. Travelers were left sleeping in airports as carefully planned journeys unraveled.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a Friday briefing that “old hardware that went down” was responsible for the nationwide grounding. He cautioned that restoring normal air traffic would be “slow.”
More than 2,600 flights within, into or out of the US had already been canceled for Saturday, while over 450 others were delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.
Duffy called on Congress to approve $50 billion in emergency funding, warning that the “old legacy equipment” would “continue to fail” and trigger similar outages.
“We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go,” Duffy said. “But, you will have more of these.”
Americans endured the longest aviation stoppage since 9/11 on Friday after an exceptionally rare ground stop stranded about 1.5 million passengers
The Federal Aviation Administration said “extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons” led to the nationwide flight suspension
More than 2,500 flights scheduled for Saturday had already been canceled, with over 400 additional delays reported
Duffy said President Donald Trump had requested the funding, describing the appeal as bipartisan.
“I think the question for the American people is, do you want your Congress to fund this?” Duffy added.
According to Duffy, instability in radar communications at air traffic control centers began at 3:36 p.m.
More than 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the ground stop was imposed, he said.
When the stoppage was announced Friday, the FAA said flights had been halted “out of an abundance of caution.”
“Every flight has been accounted for, and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis,” the FAA said.
Passengers across the country reacted with shock and confusion, both inside airports and aboard planes, after the unusual ground stop was announced.
The FAA later said on X that it had “thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable” before authorizing flights to resume.
FlightAware reported more than 8,600 cancellations and 7,200 delays in the US on Friday.
Some domestic flights began departing late Friday after the ground stop ended. However, airlines are expected to need several days to recover because so many aircraft and crews were displaced.
Officials said they expected the aviation system to return to normal in time for the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed “old hardware that went down” and warned that restoring normal air traffic would be “slow”
The ground stop lasted roughly five hours, with more than 3,500 aircraft in the air when it was issued Friday
More than 8,600 cancellations and 7,200 delays were recorded in the US on Friday, leaving passengers sleeping in airports including LaGuardia
The stoppage was the first since January 11, 2023, when a critical FAA computer system malfunctioned, and only the second nationwide halt since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Mullin said there was no indication of a threat to the US, describing the incident instead as a “communication outage.”
“This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11,” Mullin told reporters outside the White House on Friday. “That’s a road I won’t go down.”
Mullin said the FAA was installing “new equipment, new technology” that had overwhelmed the older system.
Democrats criticized President Trump for not personally addressing the FAA ground stop on Friday.
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At around 5:52 p.m. ET, Trump posted on Truth Social about his plans to “make our entertainment industry great again,” outlining work with lawmakers from both parties on the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act.
The President did not mention the ground stop, which had been announced about two hours earlier.
Trump later said the incident did not appear to be a cyberattack and could have been caused by an aging system that “relies on some old broken stuff” he had attempted to upgrade, according to FOX News correspondent Peter Doocy.
The Democratic members of the House Committee on Homeland Security also condemned the administration’s response in a post on X.
“What the hell is going on?” the account wrote. “Trump and his cabinet are completely out of their depth.”
New Jersey Representative Nellie Pou, a Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Aviation, urged the Trump administration to provide answers “promptly and forthrightly.”
“I do not want to speculate the cause of this crisis right now but this is a massive, almost unprecedented disaster impacting tens of millions of Americans,” she wrote on X.
The President received regular updates on the situation Friday, Our News Outlet understands.
Friday’s stoppage was the first nationwide US flight halt since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system failed
There was no indication that the ground stop was connected to the Microsoft outage that disrupted subscription services worldwide earlier in the week
The FAA said flights were grounded “out of an abundance of caution” during the nationwide stoppage
Trump later urged Congress to quickly approve legislation to modernize air traffic control systems, airport towers, terminals and other aviation infrastructure during a nighttime phone call with Republican Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, CNN’s Kit Maher reported.
Schmitt sits on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. In September, he introduced a bill that would provide $30 billion in federal funding to upgrade US aviation infrastructure.
The Trump administration rejected claims that the communications problems behind the ground stop were connected to the FAA’s new AI-powered system, which is being introduced to help predict problems in the skies.
The FAA’s SMART system operates from a single location near Washington, DC, where specialists assess flight schedules, weather forecasts and hundreds of other data streams.
That office then sends recommendations to the FAA command center, which relays them to air traffic controllers nationwide for consideration.
Duffy said at Friday’s briefing that “there was no possible way SMART would have impacted what happened today.”
He said the system was “completely disconnected” from the systems responsible for managing US air traffic.
ASI, the company that developed SMART, said “the current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.”
The Trump administration denied that the communications failure was linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system
Some Democrats criticized President Donald Trump for not publicly addressing the flight stoppage
The FAA said international flights would be reviewed individually during the ground stop
Passengers waited with their luggage at New York’s LaGuardia Airport after flights were grounded Friday
There was also no evidence linking the nationwide ground stop to the global Microsoft outage earlier in the week, which left millions unable to access the company’s subscription services.
Microsoft said it had found no indication that its service disruption was related to the aviation stoppage.
Several sports teams scheduled to compete over the weekend changed game times, rearranged travel plans or hired buses after the flight disruptions.
In college football, Auburn chose to travel by bus to Mississippi State after the SEC moved Saturday’s kickoff to 4:15 p.m.
Purdue also planned to take buses from West Lafayette, Indiana, to its game at Iowa.
Other affected schools included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which said it would not fly to Oklahoma for its game against the Sooners until Saturday morning.
