The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all US flights Friday afternoon, due to “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” the agency said in a statement. Flights already in the air will be allowed to land, the agency said, but no new ones are permitted to take off.
\n\nIn a post on X, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the ground stop was related to a communication issue affecting Air Traffic Control Centers, and said that agency technicians are investigating.
\n\nThe ground stop came after widespread reports of radio frequency outages among several of the nation’s most critical Air Traffic Control Centers, including in Boston, Chicago, and New York. Air traffic controllers use designated radio frequencies to communicate with pilots and manage and monitor airspace safety. In the past, controllers have used voice communications relayed over these radio frequencies to direct traffic; in recent years, the FAA has also rolled out a text-based communication system.
\n\nReached for comment, an FAA spokesperson did not provide any additional details.
\n\nNationwide ground stops are rare. The FAA halted all air traffic on September 11, 2001. In January of 2023, a ground stop was issued after an outage to a critical system that the…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/