The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon after a communications problem affected air traffic control centers nationwide, temporarily preventing flights from taking off at U.S. airports.
The FAA described the action Friday as necessary because of “extraordinary circumstances” and safety concerns. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport said departures were temporarily suspended, while aircraft already in the air were allowed to continue toward their destinations.
The disruption is unusual because the order applies nationwide. Ground stops themselves, however, are a normal, if highly restrictive, tool the FAA can use to manage the nation’s airspace.
So what is a ground stop?
Put simply, a ground stop keeps certain airplanes on the ground rather than allowing them to take off and potentially creating congestion or safety problems in the air.
Under FAA traffic-management rules, a ground stop requires all planes to stay on the ground. The agency says several circumstances trigger a ground stop, including severe weather, low airport capacity, closed runways, over-saturated airspace, or, in a situation like today, when air traffic control cannot provide normal service.
It is different from a ground delay program. Under a ground delay program, flights are assigned departure times designed to meter the number of aircraft arriving at a congested airport. Under a ground stop, affected aircraft simply remain at their departure points for the duration of the stop.
When has the FAA stopped flights nationwide before?
Friday’s event appears to be only the third nationwide ground stop in modern U.S. aviation history, based on FAA records and the agency’s historical material. That’s a much stronger distinction for the story than saying ground stops generally are rare, because airport-level stops are not.
September 11, 2001
The most extraordinary shutdown came during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
According to an FAA history of aviation restrictions following the attacks, the agency moved to ground aircraft across the country as the attacks unfolded and shut down U.S. airspace by 9:45 a.m. Airports and commercial flights began reopening two days later, on Sept. 13, although additional restrictions remained in place.
The circumstances were fundamentally different from Friday’s communications outage. The 2001 order was a response to an ongoing terrorist attack involving hijacked commercial aircraft.
January 11, 2023
More than two decades later, an FAA computer failure produced another nationwide halt.
On Jan. 11, 2023, the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system went down. A surviving FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center advisory explicitly ordered a ground stop with exceptions for military and medical evacuation aircraft.
NOTAMs distribute critical safety information pilots and flight crews need before operating a flight. The FAA said at the time that it ordered airlines to pause domestic departures while it worked to validate the integrity of flight and safety information. Departures gradually resumed that morning.
The agency eventually determined that contract personnel had unintentionally deleted files while trying to correct synchronization between the primary NOTAM database and its backup. The FAA said its investigation found no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious intent.
The 2023 outage also exposed broader concerns about aging FAA technology. The U.S. Government Accountability Office later said the shutdown prompted the FAA to assess 138 air traffic control systems. That assessment classified 51 systems as unsustainable and another 54 as potentially unsustainable.
November 13, 2026
Friday’s shutdown became the next nationwide ground stop.
KIRO 7’s continuing coverage reports the FAA attributed the stop to a temporary telecommunications outage affecting regional air traffic control centers. The agency said aircraft already in the air had been accounted for, while international flights would be handled on a case-by-case basis.
©2026 Cox Media Group
