Chaos is unfolding in America’s airports on Friday, November 13 after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all flights be grounded immediately.
CNN reports that the FAA has issued a statement ordering all flights grounded until further notice, “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Per Reuters, the order comes shortly after the agency “reported serious air traffic control communications issues” that led the FAA to halt all air traffic in Chicago as the result of air traffic control communications issues.
“All departing traffic should remain groundstopped until further notice,” the FAA said in the statement, noting that international flights would be examined on “a case-by-case basis.”
Flights Can Land But Cannot Take Off
The cause for grounding all flights nationwide was not made clear, but an FAA spokesperson told CNN it stemmed from “a communications problem impacting Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which handle flights going across the country.”
According to the FAA, flights that are already in the air will be permitted to land, but flights already on the ground were to remain there until further notice.
The last time the FAA took the extraordinary measure of grounding all air trafiic nationwide was in January of 2023, when a pilot notification system went down.
Before that, however, flights were last grounded throughout the U.S. in 2001, following the 9/11 terror attacks.
As of 5:35 p.m. ET, there have been no further statements from the FAA as to when normal air traffic will resume.
This is a developing story and will be updated when more information becomes available.
All Flights Nationwide Grounded by FAA ‘Due to Extraordinary Circumstances’