What happened the last time the FAA grounded all departing flights

ATLANTA - A sweeping telecommunications outage across all U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers forced the Federal Aviation Administration to halt departing flights nationwide Friday afternoon, stalling hundreds of flights in Atlanta and disrupting air travel across the country.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the agency was addressing the communications breakdown, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the stoppage was a telecommunications outage and not a cyberattack or security threat.

Friday’s order marks the latest in a multiyear string of equipment malfunctions, staffing crises, airline technology glitches and localized emergencies that have repeatedly snarled U.S. aviation.

Recent travel issues

The backstory:

Less than two months before Friday’s nationwide halt, a severed fiber-optic cable in New Jersey knocked out primary and backup communications circuits at a regional radar facility on Sept. 21, 2026, prompting the FAA to impose an hourslong ground stop across Northeast airports before operations resumed.

Individual carriers have also suffered systemwide technology meltdowns requiring federal ground stops. On July 28, 2026, a connectivity outage at American Airlines forced the FAA to briefly ground American Airlines flights nationwide. Similar technical glitches triggered FAA-backed ground stops for American Airlines on Sept. 24, 2025, and for all Alaska Airlines mainline and Horizon aircraft on July 21, 2025.

Government shutdown strains air traffic control

Dig deeper:

In late 2025, prolonged staffing shortages pushed the national airspace to a near standstill during a historic federal government shutdown that left roughly 13,000 air traffic controllers working without pay.

In early November 2025, as controller absences climbed to between 20% and 40% nationally—and higher at major hubs—the FAA began cutting air traffic across 40 major U.S. airports, starting at 4% and ramping toward 10%. As the restrictions entered their second and third days, airlines canceled thousands of flights nationwide and Newark Liberty International Airport was hit with a ground stop.

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where staffing shortages had already caused ripple delays, severe thunderstorms on Nov. 8, 2025, triggered an afternoon ground stop that added to delays and cancellations, pushing single-day totals to nearly 600 delays and more than 320 cancellations. Duffy slashed the flight reductions from 6% to 3% on Nov. 14, 2025, after the government reopened and staffing improved.

Tower evacuations, radio blackouts and earthquakes

Local perspective:

Localized infrastructure vulnerabilities have also triggered major regional disruptions over the past two years:

Atlanta tower evacuation: On Oct. 10, 2025, a reported gas odor forced the evacuation of the air traffic control tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, prompting the FAA to divert incoming flights and issue a ground stop that drove local delays to 500 before the tower was cleared.

Newark radar and radio outages: Throughout spring and summer 2025, Newark Liberty International Airport suffered repeated communications failures. Following an April 28, 2025, incident in which Philadelphia radar controllers lost radar and communications for 90 seconds, a May 19, 2025, radio outage and staffing shortage triggered hourslong ground delays and hundreds of cancellations. Another equipment issue affecting radio frequencies forced a temporary ground stop at Newark on Aug. 28, 2025.

Northeast earthquake: On April 5, 2024, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake outside New York City prompted the FAA to temporarily ground flights at major regional airports, including Newark and John F. Kennedy International Airport, while facilities were inspected.

The 2023 NOTAM system meltdown

Big picture view:

Prior to Friday, the only nationwide ground stop of all departing U.S. flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred on Jan. 11, 2023.

That stoppage, which disrupted more than 11,000 flights, stemmed from a failure of the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, pilot-alert system. A preliminary FAA review later determined that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while synchronizing a live primary database with a backup database. Following the meltdown, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned that the federal government needed to "pick up the pace" on FAA modernization to replace aging computer systems.