Americans face day of travel hell after worst airport crisis since 9/11 left 1.5 million passengers stranded with more than 3,100 flights delayed or canceled today… while White House says it could happen AGAIN
Americans face more travel chaos today after the worst aviation crisis since 9/11 left more than 1.5 million passengers stranded with thousands of flights canceled.
Trump administration officials have warned that the disruption, which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin called a ‘national emergency,’ could happen again.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cited extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons’ caused by communications issues at regional air traffic control centers for the halt.
Though the five-hour ground stop was lifted shortly before 8.30pm ET on Friday, its effects will continue to be felt over the weekend, with travelers forced to sleep at airports and plans totally upended.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press briefing on Friday that ‘old hardware that went down’ had caused the ground stop of all flights across the country, and that returning air traffic to normality was ‘going to be slow.’
In addition to the more than 2,600 cancelations within, into or out of the US already reported for Saturday, more than 450 flights have also been delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.
Duffy asked Congress for $50 billion in emergency funding while warning that the ‘old legacy equipment’ would ‘continue to fail’ and cause similar outages.
‘We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go,’ Duffy said. ‘But, you will have more of these.’
Americans faced the longest aviation stoppage since 9/11 on Friday after an extremely rare ground stop was issued, stranding about 1.5 million passengers
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the nationwide halt in flights had been caused by ‘extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons’
More than 2,500 flights on Saturday have already been canceled, and more than 400 have also been delayed
Duffy said that President Donald Trump had ‘asked for the money,’ saying that his demand was ‘bipartisan.’
‘I think the question for the American people is, do you want your Congress to fund this?’ Duffy added.
Duffy said the ‘instability’ in the radar communications at air traffic control centers started at 3.36pm.
More than 3,500 airplanes were in the air when the ground stop was issued, he said.
The FAA said Friday when the stoppage was announced that all flights were halted ‘out of an abundance of caution.’
‘Every flight has been accounted for, and international flights will be handled on a case–by–case basis,’ the FAA said.
Travelers across the US reacted with shock and confusion at airports and even mid-flight on airplanes when the atypical ground stop was announced.
The FAA said in a statement on X that it had ‘thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable’ before clearing flights to resume.
On Friday, more than 8,600 cancelations and 7,200 delays were reported in the US, according to FlightAware.
Some domestic flights began departing late Friday after the ground stop was lifted. However, airlines are expected to only recover in days as so many planes and crews were affected.
Officials said they believe the system would be back to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving holiday rush.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press briefing on Friday that ‘old hardware that went down’ and cautioned that returning to normal air traffic would be ‘slow’
The halt lasted for about five hours. More than 3,500 airplanes were in the air when the ground stop was issued on Friday
More than 8,600 cancelations and 7,200 delays were reported in the US on Friday following the rare ground stop. Passengers could be seen sleeping on the airport, such as here at LaGuardia
The flight halt was the first since January 11, 2023, which happened after a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and just the second since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Mullin, the DHS Secretary, said there was no indication of any threats to the US, adding that the incident was a ‘communication outage.’
‘This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11,’ Mullin told reporters outside the White House on Friday. ‘That’s a road I won’t go down.’
Mullin said during the presser that the FAA was installing ‘new equipment, new technology’ and ‘it was overwhelming the older system.’
President Trump was criticized by Democrats for not addressing the FAA’s ground stop himself on Friday.
Around 5.52pm ET, Trump posted on Truth Social about his desire to ‘make our entertainment industry great again,’ outlining how he was working with politicians across both aisles on the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act.
However, the President did not make any mention of the ground stop, which had been communicated roughly two hours earlier.
Trump later said the ground stop did not seem to be a cyber attack and that it could be a result of an old system that ‘relies on some old broken stuff’ he had tried to upgrade, according to FOX News correspondent Peter Doocy.
The Democratic members of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s account on X blasted the Trump administration’s response to the ground stop.
‘What the hell is going on?’ the Democrats’ account wrote. ‘Trump and his cabinet are completely out of their depth.’
New Jersey Rep. Nellie Pou, a Democrat who is on the House Subcommittee on Aviation, called for the Trump administration to ‘be prompt and forthright in providing answers.’
‘I do not want to speculate the cause of this crisis right now but this is a massive, almost unprecedented disaster impacting tens of millions of Americans,’ she wrote on X.
The President was getting constant updates on the situation on Friday, the Daily Mail understands.
Friday’s stoppage was the first in the US since January 2023, which happened after a key FAA computer system malfunctioned
There was no indication that the halt was connected to the Microsoft outage earlier in the week that knocked out the company’s subscriptions services for millions around the world
The FAA said flights had been grounded ‘out of an abundance of caution’ when communicating the nationwide halt
Trump later urged Congress to pass legislation modernizing air traffic control, airport towers, terminals and other infrastructure as soon as possible in a nighttime phone call with Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, CNN’s Kit Maher reported.
Schmitt serves on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. He introduced a bill in September that would provide $30 billion in federal funding to update the US’ aviation infrastructure.
The Trump administration rejected suggestions that the communications problems resulting in the nationwide ground stop were linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system that the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.
The FAA’s SMART system is based in a single location near Washington DC, where a team of experts analyzes flight schedules, weather forecasts and hundreds of other streams of data.
That office then sends recommendations to the FAA’s command center that relays them to controllers across the country for consideration.
Duffy said during Friday’s presser that ‘there was no possible way SMART would have impacted what happened today.’
He said that was because the system was ‘completely disconnected’ to the systems that manage air traffic in the US.
The company that designed the system, ASI, said ‘the current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.’
The Trump administration rejected suggestions that the problems were linked to the FAA’s new AI–powered system
President Donald Trump was criticized by some Democrats after not publicly responding to the stoppage
The FAA said international flights would be handled on a case–by–case basis as a result of the stop
Passengers can be seen waiting at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Friday with their luggage following the grounding of flights
There was also no suggestion that the nationwide ground stop had any connection to this week’s global Microsoft outage that left millions unable to use the company’s subscription services.
Microsoft said it had no indication that the nationwide ground stop was related to the service disruption.
Some sports teams scheduled to play this weekend also adjusted the start times of games, rescheduled flights and chartered buses as a result of the chaos brought on by the ground stop.
In college football, Auburn opted to take a bus to Mississippi State with the SEC pushing back the Saturday start time to 4.15pm.
Purdue also decided to board buses from West Lafayette, Indiana, for its game at Iowa.
Other schools affected included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which said it did not plan on flying to Oklahoma for its game against the Sooners until Saturday morning.
