Nationwide Ground Stop After Communications Failure in the US, More Than 8,200 Flights Canceled

The nationwide ground stop that halted all air travel across the United States and stranded thousands of passengers has been canceled.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the rare nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, after outdated air traffic communications equipment failed.

According to a Bangla report, departing flights were halted across the United States for more than four hours after the communications problem affected air traffic control centres, before the order was lifted.

According to aviation data firm Cirium, more than 8,200 flights — over 31 percent of those scheduled in the United States for Friday — were canceled.

According to flight-tracking service FlightAware, more than 6,600 flights had been canceled by 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA reopened airspace at 8:15 p.m. Eastern. But speaking at a White House briefing, he said there were limits to how quickly flight departures could begin moving again that night.

Airlines began to restore some flights after the nationwide stop was lifted. United Airlines said that while many of its flights had been canceled, some were being restored.

At Newark Liberty International Airport, passengers groaned loudly as an announcement ordered them back to their gates for both domestic and international flights.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, passengers waited to board a flight to Paris that was delayed because the pilot had not been able to take off.

Cheers and applause erupted in the Delta Sky Club at Los Angeles International Airport when travellers heard the announcement that the nationwide ground stop had been lifted.

Some professional and college sports teams were stuck on runways, or opted to pile into buses, ahead of games this weekend that are now uncertain because of the disruption.

Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who served during the Biden administration, was stranded in Denver. Standing in a Denver hotel bar, he could not believe what he had just watched, the report said.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the leader of the House Democrats, shifted the blame for Friday's ground stop back to the Trump administration.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been clamouring for another 30 billion dollars in air traffic modernisation funds from Congress for several months. On Friday night, he called on lawmakers to give emergency funding.

Duffy said their fix gave a pretty good indication that it was a legacy network problem that went down. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new technology upgrades overloaded the existing, antiquated system.

Duffy and Mullin were asked whether they could say with 100 percent certainty that this was not the result of a cyberattack or rogue artificial intelligence. Mullin sought to assure the public that they were not in danger.

According to Vikrant Vaze, a Dartmouth professor specialising in commercial aviation, it could take days for air travel to fully normalise after an event of this scale.

Asked whether travellers should expect disruptions to their Thanksgiving travel plans, Duffy said he thought flights would be back up and operational by then.

Ever since a frightening air-traffic control technology failure that affected Newark Liberty International Airport in April 2025, Duffy has repeatedly raised the question of older FAA systems ceasing to work.