From BBC News · · 2m
US ground stop: longest since 9/11 grounds 16,500 flights
A communications failure in an aging air traffic control system forced the FAA to ground all US flights for over four hours on Friday, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.
In brief
A communications failure in an aging air traffic control system forced the FAA to ground all US flights for over four hours on Friday, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. The FAA lifted the longest nationwide ground stop since September eleven two thousand one after a four-hour outage caused by an overloaded…
Longest ground stop since 9/11
The FAA lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday that lasted more than four hours, the longest since the September eleven two thousand one terrorist attacks.
Over 16,500 flights affected
The ground stop led to more than eight thousand five hundred delayed and nearly eight thousand cancelled flights on Friday, according to FlightAware.
International flights suspended
All US-bound air traffic from Eurocontrol member states was suspended. There are forty two Eurocontrol member states, including dozens of EU nations, the UK and Turkey, as well as Israel and Morocco.
Recovery will take days
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the outage would cause a ripple effect for a few days. Tens of thousands of people were stranded in airports without knowledge of where they would sleep that night.
“It's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon.”
Passenger compensation rights
Under the FAA Reauthorization Act of two thousand twenty four, cancelled or significantly delayed flights must be offered alternative travel or a full refund.Airlines must issue refunds within seven business days for credit card purchases.
UK passengers get extra protection
Passengers travelling from the UK to the US or flying with a UK carrier have additional rights.
Legacy system overloaded
Sean Duffy said a legacy air traffic control communications system became overloaded.Analogue telecom switches and routers got overloaded with data and went down, affecting communications and radar.
“It's going to continue to fail.”
No cyber-attack, no danger
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was zero evidence it was a cyber-attack and ruled out any link to the global Microsoft outage that began on Thursday.
Second major outage in five years
This was only the second nationwide stoppage since September eleven two thousand one. A two thousand twenty three outage in the Notice to Air Missions system lasted one hour and fifty two minutes, delayed about…
The short version
The FAA lifted the longest nationwide ground stop since September eleven two thousand one after a four-hour outage caused by an overloaded legacy communications system, affecting over sixteen thousand flights.
