By Terry Castleman, Hannah Fry, Clara Harter, Iris Kwok and Richard Winton
Los Angeles Times
(TNS)
The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday issued an extraordinary four-hour ground stoppage on all flights in the United States after a communications issue crippled air traffic control centers.
The move caused havoc at airports across the country and affected thousands of flights. The stop was lifted at around 5:30 p.m. PST, but it’s expected to have a cascade effect that will disrupt air travel for days.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed that it was a telecommunications outage and that the ground stop did not constitute a national security threat.
“There is no indication that we’ve had, no reason to believe, that as of right now this was a threat to the United States,” Mullin told reporters at the White House, later repeating there was “no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us.”
It marks the second full ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The most recent full ground stop, which lasted about 90 minutes, was in 2023 when a pilot notification system went down.
“Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” the FAA advisory read, “all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.” Inbound international flights would be handled “on a case by case basis,” according to the agency.
There were more than 9,500 flights delayed across the United States and about 5,300 cancellations Friday evening, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. At Los Angeles International Airport, more than 600 flights were delayed and more than 280 had been canceled.
It appeared that some flights were being permitted to resume. Hawaiian/Alaska Airlines confirmed that all of its West Coast flights will resume, the Hawaii Department of Transportation wrote on social media.
The outage comes as a L3Harris, a technology company and defense contractor, is replacing decades-old copper wire connections with modern high-speed networks across all FAA facilities. Federal sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the Los Angeles Times that the outage responsible for the ground stop is on a system overseen by L3Harris that is undergoing upgrades.
Officials have not confirmed what caused the outage.
Several days ago, the FAA also announced it would be rolling out an artificial intelligence tool nationwide to help avoid flight delays. The tool, Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories, known as SMART, is a cloud-based platform system that was billed as an enhancement to existing FAA air traffic management systems by providing a shared, data-driven view of the national airspace.
Mullin told reporters that officials are looking at any links between the new system and the stoppage. But in a post on social media Friday afternoon, the AI company that created SMART, Air Space Intelligence, said that “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.”
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The stop left passengers stranded and desperate for answers.
Zack Richeimer, 29, found himself stuck at LAX’s Terminal 6 Friday, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” hoping to find a way to San Francisco.
When he arrived at the airport, his flight to SFO was officially delayed, and the screens at the terminal were not showing any cancellations, so he figured he just needed to wait. Then his phone lit up, with several friends telling him: “You’re stuck.”
An Alaska Airlines agent helped him rebook for Saturday, but Richeimer wanted to keep his plans in the Bay Area and scrambled to find a way to make it there. Other travelers around him seemed either to be frantically working on their phones or sitting in disbelief.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” he said.
His flight home to New York City on Sunday will depart from SFO, so he tried the rental car companies—hoping to drive instead—but no one was picking up the phone.
“I’m also part of a mass exodus from this airport at the moment,” Richeimer said. “I came to L.A. not realizing that I might spend the rest of my life here.”
His plan was to show up at a rental car facility near LAX and hope for the best. The backup plan: his friends’ couch.
Shortly before 3:30 p.m., Irvine resident Maria Moye, 50, sat at the Delta terminal at LAX answering work emails she waited for a rideshare to come take her home.
The retail marketing director had arrived at the airport two hours before for a planned 3:40 p.m. flight to New York’s JFK airport for a work trip—only to find that it had been affected by the stoppage. She said she tried canceling her ticket, but Delta’s app and website were having technical issues.
“I feel better that I’m not getting on,” Moye said. “Just in case.”
In audio posted by the ATC, a controller could be heard announcing the ground stop to pilots on the runway at San Diego International Airport.
“That’s a joke, right?” a pilot responded in disbelief. The air traffic controller confirmed that it was not a joke, and said the ground stop was because of an issue with equipment.
Multiple voices on the channel then speculated that the stop was related to Thursday’s Microsoft Outlook outage.
Mullin told reporters on Friday that he did not believe the telecommunications issue was tied to the earlier Microsoft outage.
In an interview on Friday, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said that the FAA telecommunications outage was completely unacceptable and that the agency needs to create systems that do not have a single point of failure.
“I urge the FAA and the Trump administration to make sure this never happens again,” he said.
The California congressman said there needs to be congressional hearings on the cause of the technical issue and improvements enacted.
“What just happened is enormously damaging to trust in our air system,” he said, “and our air system is a vital component of our national economy.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Aviation, Space and Innovation Subcommittee, said she will be demanding answers from the FAA about the ground stop.
At Denver International Airport, a pilot and a controller confirmed that the stop was expected to last for more than six hours. In audio from the ATC, the controller said the ground stop was in effect until 9 p.m. local time, or 8 p.m. in California.
California’s Office of Emergency Services is reaching out to federal and state officials to determine the extent of the effects on the state’s airports and passengers, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s news office wrote on X.
Airlines operating across the country were scrambling to notify passengers, many of whom had already arrived at airports expecting to board a plane only to be met with delays and cancellations.
“Flights already in the air can continue to their destinations. We expect disruption to our schedule for the rest of the day, depending on the length of the FAA’s nationwide ground stop,” an American Airlines spokesperson told The Times. “It will be all hands on deck across American to get customers on their way as soon as possible when the FAA lifts this ground stop.”
United and Delta airlines have posted updates on their websites to alert passengers.
“The FAA has issued a nationwide ground stop. New domestic flights will not depart while the FAA ground stop remains in place. International departures are being managed on a case-by-case basis by the FAA. United flights that are already airborne will continue, but diversions are occurring due to the number of airplanes on the ground at our hubs. Cancellations are being implemented due to congestion in the nation’s air traffic system,” United wrote on its website.
Dylan Schroeder, 37, had already boarded a plane in Charlotte, North Carolina, around 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time, headed for Orlando, Florida, when the pilot made an unusual announcement.
“Once everyone was on board,” he said, “the pilot came on saying Air Traffic Control was having system issues.”
The pilot said they’d stay on the plane for an update, and after just more than an hour announced that the passengers would deplane.
Schroeder, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, resident, said the overall mood on the plane was decent “considering the circumstances.” Several passengers who appeared to be going to Disney World appeared to be disappointed.
(Staff writers Caroline Petrow-Cohen, Kevin Rector, Grace Toohey and Nilesh Christopher Philip contributed to this report)
Photo credit: Miguel Ángel Sanz/Unsplash
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©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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