I'm watching it live on ADSBexhange, here's a flight I picked at random going approximately past me that'll land in Detroit about an hour from now... there's not much left over the US over 40,000 feet. Only 2 planes over Indiana at that altitude right now.
It's eerie seeing the total number of aircraft tracked decrease. I put on a filter for 1000' to 80000', to exclude aircraft on the ground, and the number was around 12K when I started watching. It's down to just over 9.4K now. Wild.
ATCSCC Advisory
ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP
EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.
Airplane software is some of the oldest on the planet, pre-dating anything that would be considered a best practice. When you see something weird in the space, assume it is because someone in the 1960s thought using more than two characters world be a profligate waste of space.
Unrolling these decisions is a monumental task given the decades of hardware already deployed in the field that will only be upgraded when the current unit fails.
Oh nice, very helpful. The sibling thread mentions that this problem is specific to "ARTCCs", which are not the towers at airports but rather central hubs:
Between the sectors administered by [smaller towers] are 20 contiguous areas of US airspace above 18,000 feet, each managed by an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)...
A flight is handed off from one Center to another until it descends near its destination, when control is transferred to the TRACON serving the destination, and ultimately to the tower controller serving the airport.
Wikipedia mentions they in particular use special "very high frequency aviation bands" (around "AM 118-137 MHz"), which is presumably why they're all linked together. It also mentions sharing systems, but no clear specifics that I can find. Certainly doesn't disprove the botched rollout theory, tho...
EDIT: someone below posted this, seems relevant -- the 'Radar multiplexer pipeline' that's on a "fast track" and an "aggressive track": https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... TL;DR: upgrading radio systems from old analog tech to new digital tech, I think?
That’s obviously not what’s happening. But if this upgrade is really implicated, the real question would be where the line of accepted residual risk for an outage like this was drawn.
Same here, I get it only on some refreshes, otherwise it shows "no advisories". I hope that's not the main path these things are disseminated normally.
I have no idea whether this particular failure was Microsoft's fault, but I was in the air on September 14, 2004 when a substantial portion of the southwestern US's air traffic control went down:
(I was near ORD at the time, flying toward the outage area. We diverted to ORD, and the pilot was very friendly about it.)
At the time I thought it was Microsoft's fault, as Windows 95 and 98 were susceptible to crashing when GetTickCount() overflowed, and this ATC crash was due to a 32-bit millisecond counter on a Windows machine overflowing, but in this particular instance the system was apparently not running on a version of Windows with this particular bug and the failure was just an application error.
If I’m not tasked with solving the problems then is there anything I can do for that is productive? Discussing it at all seems like unproductive rubbernecking.
Agreed. I would apply this further; stop letting 1970s and 1980s pop culture fads consume our attention; let go of Star Wars and Marvel etc etc; previous centuries headlines
Let go of software dev; as is a mechanical task from the 60s-70s
> A computer is a device that enables a person to make more mistakes faster than any previous invention, with the possible exception of the combination of handguns and tequila.
More info on AP [1]. Looks like a comms issue. The figures they quoted for the overhaul are absolutely insane - almost $45 billion (I used to work in telecom):
> "The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year."
> "Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it."
It's because air traffic control systems in the US haven't been significantly upgraded in like a century. Keep kicking the can it will get more and more expensive
I’ve seen figures that estimate the aviation industry to provide about $1.5 trillion worth of GDP for America, so 4-5 billion dollars. Feel free to double that for the cost of dealing with unexpected disruptions and loss of institutional trust.
When the system is held together with chewing gum and 1980s-era software, when it fails, "someone screws up" is not a fair reaction. Of course it fails! The wonder is that it still mostly works.
> Transport Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA "issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.
The flight crew on my LHR-SEA flight "still expects to land in the US." The lack of conviction in that expectation was audible. I don't get the impression that they're being told very much, but maybe that's literally a consequence of the "communication issues."
Secretary of Homeland Security just assured a press conference that all planes in the air will be dealt with on a case by case basis. Some may be prioritised.
I don’t like Lutnick, but insinuating that he knew 9/11 would happen, and only cared to save himself is a baseless conspiracy that doesn’t live up to what HN standards should be
Yep those are the last two. In 2023 it was because of a contractor deleted some file and caused NOTAM to go down, and 2001… well we all know what happened
There were three NORAD exercises (Sky Shield I, II, and III) in 1960, 1961, and 1962 where all civil aviation across the US and Canada were grounded for several hours (the 1961 one was 12 hours, 1960 was 6 hours and 1962 was 5.5 hours). This was with several months of advance notice. These were exercises to test how effective NORAD would be at engaging Soviet bombers. While they publicly announced that they were 99% effective, in actual fact no more than a quarter of the bombers were even engaged before they reached their target. This evaluation was not declassified until the 1990s.
After 1962 there was too much air travel to continue to shut it down for exercises, and NORAD switched to smaller, regional level things that did not shut down air travel after that. But the results of Sky Shield III in 1962 were the only experience that the FAA had to work from when they did the full ground stop after September 11th. Sky Shield III had tested how quickly air traffic control could clear the sky in the event of a nuclear war- the USAF had put up several hundred T-33 trainers, flying them randomly around the US and Canada, and then at a certain point in the exercise the ATC had to get them all on the ground far away from major metropolitan centers (presumed lost in the war).
I do not really understand what the FAA means by “inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”
I am watching planes stacked up on final approach to land at KBOS as I type. From flight radar 24 they are a mix of foreign and domestic. So incoming flights are clearly being managed here.
Does this imply some potential risk from inbound international air traffic? Or maybe the FAA meant outbound? Something else I am missing?
I suspect they mean that inbound flights from international airports may still take off (probably in part because the FAA can't _really_ stop them, in part because the volumes are much lower and thus more manageable, and in part because one might hope that by the time it takes to get to the US from many international destination, the incident will be resolved).
Very unlikely that any international flights bound for the USA are taking off. Probably many are turning around or diverting if they are not more than halfway there.
I'm not following this very closely, but I've not seen any reports of diversions for domestic flights, so I think it'd be unlikely for international flights. The report is just for a ground stop, which is just a stop in departures; normally a ground stop would allow flights already in the air to travel to their normal destination.
That reasoning doesn't really make sense. A flight from outside the US that is inbound could divert to a non-US airport that isn't impacted by whatever is going on, depending on where they are and what their fuel status is. A domestic flight doesn't have a non-US airport to divert to.
(Sure, a flight near the Canadian or Mexican border could in theory divert to a Canadian or Mexican airport, but it's unlikely many people on those flights have their passports with them.)
Ah, my point was more that if the action being taken isn't "get planes on the ground _now_" and so the US airspace remains open for traffic already in the air, then it's unlikely they're trying to get international planes to either divert or return.
Maybe they mean inbound international flights may be allowed to take off from their origin, on a case by case basis. Usually a clearance is required to take off from both the origin and destination.
Not in the industry, but I think ground stops might actually not be a regular/automated procedural thing for inbound international flights in the way that they are for domestic flights.
As for asking already airborne flights to turn around, those coming in over the ocean might simply not have a non-US alternate airport available with their fuel remaining, so that's often not an option.
Yes, but most of them are not viable in the late stages of a flight. Planes aren't carrying enough fuel to cross an ocean for a second time; most don't even have the capacity.
Doesn't seem like it; I've seen several international flights land in JFK alone since this started. (On the other hand, these might simply not have enough fuel left to divert to any non-US airport.)
Presumably it means they may allow some international flights to the US to depart if they expect the issue to be resolved by the time they are in US airspace.
I think it's more mundane than that, I assume they mean that certain international flights will be turned around or redirected while others will complete their route. Say a flight just an hour underway London to New York might be turned around while one nearly at its destination may be allowed to land.
Depending on the nature of the disruption it may be they simply have drastically reduced capacity to handle traffic so landings may be much slower and they'll manage the traffic based on various priorities.
Probably just means that if you're less than halfway across the Atlantic, you can turn around and go back to Europe. I really wouldn't suggest reading too much into the phrasing.
Info on this is amazingly sparse. Apparently Sec. Duffy posted something on X/Twitter, and that's all the news media have.
Looking at LAX departures, it looks like nothing has departed since about 10:30 AM PST, and everything later is showing Delayed or Cancelled. There are times after Delayed, but it's not clear those times mean anything. Some are now in the past.
"flysfo.com" is too overloaded to display departures. Stuck at "loading...".
JFK departure status shows almost solid "Delayed".
I wonder if this will close the Starship launch window starting at 5:45pm EST. The FAA issued the commercial launch license earlier today. That launch is under a separate set of "commercial space rules", but presumably they need to coordinate with air traffic control.
They use third party telecom providers to relay communications between ATC “centers” and remote radio transmitters. It is not purely AM radio and outages have occurred in the past, most recently in September.
"modern" -> "we stuck digital computers into a purely analog pipeline to make sure it's capable of a wide range of harrowing, incomprehensible failures."
There isn't really one. This is a system that's supposed to have it's own built in redundancy and must not go down.
Flight Service uses a different set of radios and can relay messages to ATC, but they've been slowly dismantled over the last two decades and wouldn't have the capacity to step in for an outage (nor should they be expected to - that's not their purpose).
Some aircraft have CPDLC for text-based communication, but it's asynchronous and you can't use that as a replacement for voice communication in the terminal environment. Also, many aircraft aren't equipped to receive it.
Pilots are trained on lost comms procedures, so if you're in the air and the radio fails they'd fall back to those regulations. Basically all the aircraft would fly their last assigned clearance, and attempt to deconflict manually with other aircraft over air-to-air radio (similar to flying into an untowered airport).
@nxobject I meant litterally. The ATC system is derived from the IBM 9020 which was itself a set of interconnected System 360 systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_9020
That's a little unfair to IBM – sure, you're just as beholden to them for life, but at least the service engineer gets to your rack before you know something's gone wrong!
I'm wondering if this is another case of delayed Y2K, where the system suddenly thinks the century part is 19 instead of 20 for a two digit year of 26.
This message was pulled from a ATC communications system ordering the stop. These are terse direct communications for professionals who don't need or have time to read the story of what's going on. The news, not having any initial sources besides this is just reporting it, at the time they had no more information.
Like if you're ordering a pizza they don't need the story of your day, why you chose pepperoni, or what movie you plan to watch. Somebody else might be interested, but not the pizza guy.
EVENT TIME: 13/2100 - 14/0300
USERS CAN EXPECT AIRBORNE HOLDING TO ANY AND ALL AIRPORTS WITHIN THE
NAS DUE EQUIPTMENT OUTAGES. UPDATES WILL BE ISSUED AS ADITIONAL
INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.
EFFECTIVE TIME:
132120-140330
SIGNATURE:
26/11/13 21:20
Edit: end date of tomorrow??? Is that just temporary?
It seems that the adv/ pages are not loading any advisories, though I am just guessing and have no idea how this is meant to work. The fact that the search page has a date input would seem to imply historical advisories should be shown. If you go to https://nasstatus.faa.gov/ and click the Advisory links for any of the active events that have one, they all show as blank too. Could be totally wrong though.
This happened to me a few minutes ago. I clicked that link, it said "no advisory", I was making the same comment you made, then tried refreshing and the advisory came back.
Insane. It looks like they are showing no advisory on first page view, then advisory? Can others confirm?
> The FAA has reassured the public and airlines that SMART only suggests routes and doesn't affect air safety.
> [The] FAA also says a D.C.-based team of experts validates findings before they’re ever passed on to air traffic control, and the controllers retain the final decision on whether to accept SMART’s suggestions.
Depends if an AI DoSed an important service or not.
There used to be a lot of invisible gatekeepers in a pre-AI world. At work, everyone can ask their agent to query SQL on databases that they were supposed to use through an application. The application and the security by obscurity(end users didn't know how to connect to the DB nor did they know SQL) were the gate keepers.
Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
Listening to SFO Tower, the latest info I’ve heard is an expected stop until 04:00 UTC, but flights departing to Asia via west departure may be permitted to depart.
We are experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience but please check back soon, as we are working to have the issues resolved.
My wife is on a plane on the ground at ORD (they just landed) and they have been told they can use the restrooms but can't get off the planes. Any reason why folks wouldn't be allowed to deplane at the end of the journey if it was a radar or comms issue? They can pull up to the gate using flags . . .
We are 6th in line waiting for a gate while they tow grounded planes off of the gates. Normally those flights would have departed and we would get a gate fairly quickly, but if no one is taking off, then they need to move them, and potentially deplane the (angry) departing passengers.
This seems like one of those efficiency-vs-resilience problems. Sure, it's "more efficient" (in cost) to use the same empty/fill process for every plane, but when nobody can leave, some extra capacity to unload planes would help.
ATCSCC ADVZY 117 DCC 11/13/2026 ALL CENTERS EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES IMPLEMENTED
MESSAGE:
EVENT TIME: 13/2120 - 14/0500
CONSTRAINED FACILITIES: ZTL
DCC HAS IMPLEMENTED EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES TO 240 MINUTES
FOR ALL ENROUTE CENTERS DUE TO NATIONWIDE COMMS FAILURE.
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132121-140530
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 21:21
It means that flight plans (which include departure time) will stay in the system longer after the departure times are missed, so that IFR flight plans will not need to be re-filed. In other words, flight plans have a longer TTL.
This will ease the pain of getting things moving again, assuming they fix it by the time the 4hr window passes.
You can definitely file a flight plan later than that. 30 minutes before departure is the recommended filing time (per AIM 5-1-6), but you can even file for an immediate departure. It's just that at less then 30 minutes additional delay is possible, depending on backend handling and human processing. But in most cases the strip will print within a minute or two of submitting the flight plan.
But also, this is about when the flight plans expire out of the system if they're not activated for departure - so it's saying unused flight plans won't be deleted for 4 hours, so pilots won't have to refile for departure.
My wife's plane was about to take off (moving) but then stopped. I just messaged her to check once I saw the news. Sounds like the people onboard weren't given any info as to why. They're still on the runway waiting.
I wonder if it was Claude or ChatGPT? My money would be on the latter. Anthropic seems to generally have better security and guardrails, and apparently OpenAI’s newest cyber model is extremely capable.
ATCSCC Advisory
ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP
MESSAGE:
EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132054 - 140430
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 20:54
Due to "rolling frequency outtage" [sic]: From a claimed photo of FAA documents (I replaced the all caps with lowercase):
"... ground stop is in effect for all destinations until further notice due to rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers..."
and
"... the ground stop is now a nationwide ground stop for all centers, all destinations until further notice due to widespread frequency outtages.. ..."
I was actually expecting it to be from the Microsoft 365 outage. Non technical people have a bad habit of inserting email as a critical step in a process.
It's actually quite impressive, you have to really try to be so bad at your job of building redundant systems that some failure mode implausibly affects everything nation wide, yet allows Canadian domestic flights to proceed fine.
Did the Starship launch today just ground all flights in the USA? Maybe, maybe not. I am convinced it did. If Elon Musk can take a shred of evidence, or just make shit up, and change domestic and foreign policy, then why can't I?
We obviously live in a simulation after all, what does it matter?
>The FAA has issued a nationwide departure ground stop “due to several impacts to ATC Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities,” the Air Current reported, referring to air traffic control systems. The FAA command center said it does not have further information on the “timing or cause of this outage,” the publication said.
Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
>I can't believe people actually think outlook being down would take down all departures across the US
Because American infrastructure is modern, well designed, maintained and funded? Because government is competent and rational? I could absolutely believe that would happen.
If true and this ends up lasting an hour or more, that's going to be undeniably, objectively hilarious. At least they used to keep the planes running on time!
--- EDIT:
This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.
The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.
It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!
It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:
SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform.
The fact sheet has two more vaguely worrying bullet points -- I would say such wild speculation is unwarranted, but I struggle to think what else could cause all the radios in the nation to go down at once... Emphasis mine:
Creates **a single shared real-time picture** of schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions.
...
Enhances the effectiveness of **existing** FAA air traffic management systems.
US-bound flight from YYZ. They shut down #2 engine and parked us in inactive runway. Pilot came on and said he was reading something about "ATC radio frequency issue" but has been told by United ops that it'll be cleared in ~30 min from now.
Verizon Wireless is out here as well ("SOS"—thankfully my UA flight has Starlink).
Last time this happened in July it was due to some network handoff issue so maybe there is some fiber cut somewhere? (My friend said last time it was NE corridor Verizon fiber cut.)
There's enough space, but not enough gates. If they think the stop may end in a reasonable time some planes will be pulling away from their gates even without a departure time to make room for the landing planes (or rather, they will have missed their departure time and not have a new one). Landing planes will be able to disembark, and probably won't be boarded again until it's resolved and enough departing traffic has cleared that it's obvious that those flights won't be canceled for today as well.
The boarded and grounded planes may start disembarking passengers at some point, especially if their crews are hitting their maximum time before mandatory rest. These delays will probably prevent replacement crews from arriving.
Yes, and they'll probably do that at some point if they can't get them to the gates. Again, it'll depend on how long this lasts. They will also have to get in more crews to support that since this is not normal and not something they would have planned on in their staffing schedules for a Friday afternoon/evening.
No, and when Netflix goes down it's not a false flag due to their fear of people running their own Plex servers. Perhaps you just have anxiety about losing something you depend on, so you're projecting.
No, please stop engaging in baseless and pointless speculation. If the US wants to bomb Iran it doesn’t need more reasoning than it has already used to already do what it has done.
"Today's event is therefore generally being described as the third nationwide grounding event since September 11, 2001, counting 9/11 itself. The three incidents differ significantly in cause and scope."
Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
A team of FAA specialists in the SMART center in Washington, D.C., analyzes and validates the SMART data and provides scheduling recommendations to the agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, VA. The Command Center then routes these recommendations to air traffic control facilities for local leadership to consider.
Of course, these may be the ATC analog of claude code approvals, or they may be overstating the level of human oversight/HIL - but the overall situation seems likely more serious/unclear than something like this. I'm not sure I'd call vibe air traffic control going haywire an "extraordinary" circumstance, though certainly extraordinarily stupid.
This week alone, I've seen multiple servers fail due to hardware issues: multiple bad fans, a failed hard drive, bad network optics. Another server got bumped while an adjacent server was being worked on and lost time sync, leading to software instability/crashes. We don't have a large fleet, but we do have more servers than employees, and issues add up. We don't need any help with instability, entropy has us covered, thank you very much.
The nifty thing about stories is that they don't have to be about something directly to trigger strong feelings in your crowd or listeners.
When we are dealing with the FCC, grounding all flights and radio failures in open bands, you can drive a lot of changes.
There are a lot of pesky ESP32s out there, right? Did your company choose to go with the Espressif platform? You know, the hackable SDR one that crashes planes and clubs baby seals and tries to sell your grandparents bad financial scams?
And that is how feelings turn into rumors, which turn into "facts", through a game of telephone in which each next person wants a pat on the back for having their finger on the pulse, for wishing to be perceived as a thought leader.
And then "journalists" "feel" like they have to report on things because as long as they say they're reporting that "someone else had a feeling" they're not technically wrong, and they have bosses breathing down their necks to make the business work, to grow their monetizable audience.
And then no one knows what's true anymore, because we chose to be entertained instead of choosing to be informed.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a519b8
It's Delta Airlines flight 1070
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL1070
It's eerie seeing the total number of aircraft tracked decrease. I put on a filter for 1000' to 80000', to exclude aircraft on the ground, and the number was around 12K when I started watching. It's down to just over 9.4K now. Wild.
> “This isn’t going to just be be resolved and turned around within the hour"
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...
edit: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
13/2053
?
Unrolling these decisions is a monumental task given the decades of hardware already deployed in the field that will only be upgraded when the current unit fails.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/HUT3wjABQ6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_control_center
EDIT: someone below posted this, seems relevant -- the 'Radar multiplexer pipeline' that's on a "fast track" and an "aggressive track": https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... TL;DR: upgrading radio systems from old analog tech to new digital tech, I think?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/lost-radio-contact-leaves-pilots-o...
(I was near ORD at the time, flying toward the outage area. We diverted to ORD, and the pilot was very friendly about it.)
At the time I thought it was Microsoft's fault, as Windows 95 and 98 were susceptible to crashing when GetTickCount() overflowed, and this ATC crash was due to a 32-bit millisecond counter on a Windows machine overflowing, but in this particular instance the system was apparently not running on a version of Windows with this particular bug and the failure was just an application error.
Aren't computers great? :)
For anyone else it's unproductive rubber necking
Let go of software dev; as is a mechanical task from the 60s-70s
Cultural memory begets cultural conservatism
This is why there's such an issue with holding power to account nowadays.
To really fuck up, you need a computer.
-- some clever person whose name I do not know
> "The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year."
> "Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/flights-halted-airports-faa-f81b0...
The FAA et al. have been working to modernize US ATC since ~2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...
The next step is a ton of hardware upgrading, which always costs real money.
> Transport Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA "issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.
I think I see the problem. His claim to fame: “resident playboy” on *The Real World: Boston”. Would it really hurt to appoint qualified people?
https://x.com/_whitneywebb/status/2119846209871282200
“Generally considered,” really? Does that apply anywhere outside of r/conspiracy?
https://x.com/_whitneywebb/status/2119846209871282200
After 1962 there was too much air travel to continue to shut it down for exercises, and NORAD switched to smaller, regional level things that did not shut down air travel after that. But the results of Sky Shield III in 1962 were the only experience that the FAA had to work from when they did the full ground stop after September 11th. Sky Shield III had tested how quickly air traffic control could clear the sky in the event of a nuclear war- the USAF had put up several hundred T-33 trainers, flying them randomly around the US and Canada, and then at a certain point in the exercise the ATC had to get them all on the ground far away from major metropolitan centers (presumed lost in the war).
I am watching planes stacked up on final approach to land at KBOS as I type. From flight radar 24 they are a mix of foreign and domestic. So incoming flights are clearly being managed here.
Does this imply some potential risk from inbound international air traffic? Or maybe the FAA meant outbound? Something else I am missing?
(Sure, a flight near the Canadian or Mexican border could in theory divert to a Canadian or Mexican airport, but it's unlikely many people on those flights have their passports with them.)
Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2
The intent around the ground stop is to reduce in-air U.S. traffic.
As for asking already airborne flights to turn around, those coming in over the ocean might simply not have a non-US alternate airport available with their fuel remaining, so that's often not an option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellow_Ribbon
So my guess this is what it means "case by case". Some which are close to destination would be manually routed, others will land in different places.
Depending on the nature of the disruption it may be they simply have drastically reduced capacity to handle traffic so landings may be much slower and they'll manage the traffic based on various priorities.
Looking at LAX departures, it looks like nothing has departed since about 10:30 AM PST, and everything later is showing Delayed or Cancelled. There are times after Delayed, but it's not clear those times mean anything. Some are now in the past.
"flysfo.com" is too overloaded to display departures. Stuck at "loading...".
JFK departure status shows almost solid "Delayed".
No good explanations anywhere.
https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/national-weather-se...
Given that the FAA issue also apparently relates to communications, it does seem like it might be related.
I'm sure there is a reason for it but can they not be a little bit more specific?
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/a-calamity-disrupting-hundr...
https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... (page 3, bottom graphic)
(all the radars --> multiplexer [sadness here] --> radar data consumers)
Attention: National Radar Outage
https://www.weather.gov/afc/radaroutage
Flight Service uses a different set of radios and can relay messages to ATC, but they've been slowly dismantled over the last two decades and wouldn't have the capacity to step in for an outage (nor should they be expected to - that's not their purpose).
Some aircraft have CPDLC for text-based communication, but it's asynchronous and you can't use that as a replacement for voice communication in the terminal environment. Also, many aircraft aren't equipped to receive it.
Pilots are trained on lost comms procedures, so if you're in the air and the radio fails they'd fall back to those regulations. Basically all the aircraft would fly their last assigned clearance, and attempt to deconflict manually with other aircraft over air-to-air radio (similar to flying into an untowered airport).
There are contingencies for radio outages, but yeah, everything going down at once (if that's what's happening here, which I doubt) is bad.
I believe it's all virtualized today
Like if you're ordering a pizza they don't need the story of your day, why you chose pepperoni, or what movie you plan to watch. Somebody else might be interested, but not the pizza guy.
Edit: screenshot here: https://i.postimg.cc/XqcsDQw9/image.png Edit 2: different link still showing: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
maybe the last two numbers are a time range for which the thing is effective? and it's over now?
EVENT TIME: 13/2100 - 14/0300 USERS CAN EXPECT AIRBORNE HOLDING TO ANY AND ALL AIRPORTS WITHIN THE NAS DUE EQUIPTMENT OUTAGES. UPDATES WILL BE ISSUED AS ADITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. EFFECTIVE TIME:
132120-140330 SIGNATURE:
26/11/13 21:20
Edit: end date of tomorrow??? Is that just temporary?
Insane. It looks like they are showing no advisory on first page view, then advisory? Can others confirm?
[0]https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...
> [The] FAA also says a D.C.-based team of experts validates findings before they’re ever passed on to air traffic control, and the controllers retain the final decision on whether to accept SMART’s suggestions.
Seems unlikely.
There used to be a lot of invisible gatekeepers in a pre-AI world. At work, everyone can ask their agent to query SQL on databases that they were supposed to use through an application. The application and the security by obscurity(end users didn't know how to connect to the DB nor did they know SQL) were the gate keepers.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
We are experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience but please check back soon, as we are working to have the issues resolved.
Thank you, FAA Web Operations Team
Is it something else?
Current as of 1340 PDT:
There's a query form for looking up old advisories, and it's not returning anything for the last 15 days.
This will ease the pain of getting things moving again, assuming they fix it by the time the 4hr window passes.
So the flight planning system is having problems.
But also, this is about when the flight plans expire out of the system if they're not activated for departure - so it's saying unused flight plans won't be deleted for 4 hours, so pilots won't have to refile for departure.
https://www.weather.gov/afc/radaroutage
It is a frontpage post. That's where I saw it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ground-stop-chicago-oha...
> Los Angeles Airport and Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International were among those that were closed, according to a list on the regulator’s website.
> The outages at O’Hare and Midway were listed as “due to equipment outage”.
https://www.ft.com/content/c9b119ff-d1da-46a7-b2b3-4ad0544ff...
* https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...
effective 2:54PM - 10:30PM central time
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/modern-skies-trumps-transportat...
"... ground stop is in effect for all destinations until further notice due to rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers..."
and
"... the ground stop is now a nationwide ground stop for all centers, all destinations until further notice due to widespread frequency outtages.. ..."
https://x.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/2121344915091206311
Which is cited in the Hindustan Times (leading Indian newspaper), which refers to the Twitter source as a journalist.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/faa-issues...
It's actually quite impressive, you have to really try to be so bad at your job of building redundant systems that some failure mode implausibly affects everything nation wide, yet allows Canadian domestic flights to proceed fine.
Weird things happen when you destroy the federal infra, aka the USA.
Am I being hyperbolic? Well, this was the first national ground stop since 9/11... and for what?
https://fedscoop.com/faa-aviation-safety-system-doge-notam/
Did the Starship launch today just ground all flights in the USA? Maybe, maybe not. I am convinced it did. If Elon Musk can take a shred of evidence, or just make shit up, and change domestic and foreign policy, then why can't I?
We obviously live in a simulation after all, what does it matter?
(from Bloomberg)
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
Because American infrastructure is modern, well designed, maintained and funded? Because government is competent and rational? I could absolutely believe that would happen.
--- EDIT:
This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.
FAA Announcement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements
The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.
It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!
It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:
The fact sheet has two more vaguely worrying bullet points -- I would say such wild speculation is unwarranted, but I struggle to think what else could cause all the radios in the nation to go down at once... Emphasis mine:US-bound flight from YYZ. They shut down #2 engine and parked us in inactive runway. Pilot came on and said he was reading something about "ATC radio frequency issue" but has been told by United ops that it'll be cleared in ~30 min from now.
Last time this happened in July it was due to some network handoff issue so maybe there is some fiber cut somewhere? (My friend said last time it was NE corridor Verizon fiber cut.)
- [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-forgotten-operating-syst...
A freak FUBAR of legacy systems, an unfortunate alignment of circumstances that could have happened anytime.
Pessimistic (paranoid) cases:
1. Intentional hacking by a foreign adversary 2. Vibe coding whoops 3. OpenAI agents "running experiments"
Claude: Transmogrifying…
Shall I stop all trains too?
Cogitated for 50s · done 14:53 PM
Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2
The boarded and grounded planes may start disembarking passengers at some point, especially if their crews are hitting their maximum time before mandatory rest. These delays will probably prevent replacement crews from arriving.
https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/
...so at least it's not something 911-ish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US-Wifhg2Mo
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-says-it-will-phase-o...
This also happened on 9/11 which is curious because the NVIDIA thing caused a public rift with Lutnick yesterday:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/bessent-blames-lutnick...
You need to wait for the third shoe to drop.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50489678
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
It looks like the FAA started testing it in DC in September and annouced a nationwide rollout three days ago (https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements). This makes it seem more unlikely to be the cause, though:
Of course, these may be the ATC analog of claude code approvals, or they may be overstating the level of human oversight/HIL - but the overall situation seems likely more serious/unclear than something like this. I'm not sure I'd call vibe air traffic control going haywire an "extraordinary" circumstance, though certainly extraordinarily stupid.When we are dealing with the FCC, grounding all flights and radio failures in open bands, you can drive a lot of changes.
There are a lot of pesky ESP32s out there, right? Did your company choose to go with the Espressif platform? You know, the hackable SDR one that crashes planes and clubs baby seals and tries to sell your grandparents bad financial scams?
And then "journalists" "feel" like they have to report on things because as long as they say they're reporting that "someone else had a feeling" they're not technically wrong, and they have bosses breathing down their necks to make the business work, to grow their monetizable audience.
And then no one knows what's true anymore, because we chose to be entertained instead of choosing to be informed.
Mr. President, there's been a second timeline-split.