FAA lifts nationwide ground stop, White House says no indication of "nefarious act"

The FAA lifted the rare nationwide ground stop on all departing U.S. flights after several hours, confirming the outage had ended and airspace was reopening.

Officials attributed the disruption to a telecommunication outage that affected the FAA’s air traffic control communications network and prompted a system reboot. The White House and Homeland Security Secretary described there as no indication of a nefarious act.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said airspace opened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time, but cautioned that flight operations would not instantly resume at full speed and travelers should check with their airlines.

The ground stop and related delays affected departures at airports nationwide, with international flights and inbound traffic being managed on a case-by-case basis. The outage impacted all U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers and paused departures for safety reasons.

Before the lift, authorities noted that about 3,100 airborne aircraft were en route to U.S. airports when the ground stop began, and FlightAware logged tens of thousands of delays and cancellations in the resulting disruption. The situation prompted coordination among federal agencies and procedures for grounding all departures.