The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a halt to all domestic flights across the United States overnight Friday into Saturday after a communications failure at an air traffic control center in Chicago spread to radar and radio systems nationwide.
Aircraft preparing for takeoff were grounded immediately. Within a few hours, more than 10,000 flights had been delayed and more than 1,300 canceled.
The problem began as a localized communications fault at the Chicago control center. It quickly escalated into widespread failures of radio frequencies and radar systems at control centers around the country. According to the report, the outage left air traffic controllers unable to communicate properly with aircraft both in the air and on the ground. The FAA was forced to take the unusual step of a complete shutdown to prevent a safety risk.
The nationwide stop is extremely rare: Such an order had been issued only twice before, after the September 11, 2001 attacks and following a systems collapse in 2023.
